The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®

7:48 AM

hi all, i am new to mysql, is versions like mysql 5.6, 5.7 means we have to install only from server-side or we need to use in our queries also ?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

8:11 AM

@profile101 SQL syntax doesn't change from version to version. Not much that is.

You may have some new features added, from time to time, or old syntax deprecated.

But most queries will work fine between versions.

Master Database

9:07 AM

1

Q: I have earned a badge but it is not showing anywhere

I have earned the socratic badged, I formally received a message this morning about this, however, after I clicked track next badge I expected to see it showing on my profile, but it hasn't. This is the only proof I got, when I try to add it for tracking it says that I already have it. No, It d...

Phil

Happy Friday, Heapers

dezso

@Phil to you, too

Paul White

Friday was a lovely Spring day. I think this is my favourite time of year - not too cold, not too hot, and lots of things growing/flowering. Maybe I should write a poem :)

Phil

It's beautiful here this morning. Nice sunny day, the commute in was blue shy with some high-up orange clouds

@MasterDatabase Not sure asking that many questions is something to be proud of, but ho-hum :P

Paul White

100 well-received questions though. It's up to you lot what counts as well-received.

I'm not sure it's worth a gold badge, but hey no one asked me.

Phil

9:12 AM

They're good quality, I'm not complaining about that

Paul White

Fair enough!

Tom V

Consultant (noun): A person that acts as a proxy between a customer and dba.se

4

Paul White

ha ha ha

dezso

@TomV where is the link to the question?

Tom V

@dezso I was referring to the socratic badge

dezso

9:14 AM

@TomV ah

Paul White

The snark is strong with this one.

dezso

I was long thinking about why is it so that there are people who are answerers (the regulars here are mostly these) and there are askers

is there a mixed type, too?

/me being lazy to ask data.SE

Tom V

@dezso There are lots of people starting as askers evolving into answerers

profile 101

@ypercubeᵀᴹ thats fantastic information, than what php code or mysql queries will work work old versions will work in new version also, right ?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@profile101 Almost always.

For example, of something that will break, is the change in 5.7 that the default setting in now ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY (or something similar)

If you had queries that were misusing GROUP BY, they will break with this new setting.

You can of course change the setting or fix your queries

@profile101 And of course, you can test your application and the queries in an environment you setup, before upgrading the production servers ;)

Phil

9:23 AM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Can only be a good thing, though it'll no doubt break a shedload of crappy webapps that've been returning random data for many years :P

profile 101

@ypercubeᵀᴹ than you suggest to go with mysql 5.6 & php 7 versions ?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@profile101 No, go with the latest MySQL version.

No idea about PHP

dezso

PrintScreen, screen capture, screen shot. Different names for a very nice invention. — dezso 11 secs ago

Phil

@dezso Which you then, of course, have to paste into a word document, then .zip up before e-mailling. It's the law!

ypercubeᵀᴹ

2

A: using parenthesis in SQL

It's difficult to tell precisely without a sample result set, but I would imagine its your utilization of natural JOINs which is typically bad practice. Reasons being: I would avoid using natural joins, because natural joins are: Not standard SQL. Not informative. You aren't specifying what co...

Was NATURAL JOIN removed from the standrad?

dezso

9:26 AM

@Phil A comment is not for detailed instructions

profile 101

@ypercubeᵀᴹ why we still using "mysql" when already we have "mysqli" ?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@profile101 I'm talking about the MySQL server version.

dezso

@ypercubeᵀᴹ the utilization was

ypercubeᵀᴹ

You can use whatever PHP extensions (for connecting to MySQL) are best. mysql, mysqli, PDO no idea what is best now

profile 101

thanks @ypercubeᵀᴹ

ypercubeᵀᴹ

9:29 AM

@dezso I didn't get that

dezso

@ypercubeᵀᴹ bad joke on my part, bad wording on their part

Tom V

@dezso I've been thinking about that too, not necessarily related to the site

I think it basically boils down to attitude/curiousity

you have 2 types of people, people trying to learn how things work, and people trying to learn how to do things

The people that learned how things work end up figuring out how to do things by themselves, the people that learn how to do things end up needing constant training and having a never ending stream of questions whenever a minor detail differs from how they did the same thing before

profile 101

drivers like ` mysql, mysqli, pdo ` which is best for performance & security and overall ?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@dezso thnx for the comment.

The question reminded of a related question in this site that I have been meaning to answer, but needs a lot of time and keep forgetting it on weekends.

dezso

9:44 AM

@profile101 please read the PHP manual

mysql is deprecated since ages

profile 101

nice @dezso i will remove mysql driver from my brain, now mysqli, pdo ` which is best for performance & security and overall ?

dezso

@profile101 great. Now go and read the PHP manual, I didn't touch PHP for years

ypercubeᵀᴹ

2787

Q: How can I prevent SQL-injection in PHP?

If user input is inserted without modification into an SQL query, then the application becomes vulnerable to SQL injection, like in the following example: $unsafe_variable = $_POST['user_input']; mysql_query("INSERT INTO `table` (`column`) VALUES ('$unsafe_variable')"); That's because the us...

php mysql sql security sql-injection

@profile101 We basically have no idea. Not many PHP users in this room. Where many=1

Tom V

@ypercubeᵀᴹ The 1 being @profile101 I suppose?

dezso

@ypercubeᵀᴹ and you are not that one (many == 1)

profile 101

9:51 AM

@TomV i am php-mysql expert :-) just kidding.....

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@TomV I wasn't thinking of that but ok

Seems like no one got my joke ...

Now I have to explain it ...

Tom V

@ypercubeᵀᴹ At great length preferably

dezso

@ypercubeᵀᴹ please, please!

Not many | many == 1 => not (a single) one?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@dezso OK. I'm certainly not but your "proof" is not good. I meant to substitute "many" for "1" in that sentence;

dezso

you can, of course, post a much longer version

ypercubeᵀᴹ

9:55 AM

Not many PHP users in this room.
becomes:
Not 1 PHP users in this room.

So it was many=1 alright.

dezso

@ypercubeᵀᴹ oh

ypercubeᵀᴹ

(assuming that == stands for equality condition and = for substitution (yeah assignment)

dezso

@ypercubeᵀᴹ assignment

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Is that true in PHP?

dezso

$many

and so on, but nevermind

@ypercubeᵀᴹ = for assignment, == for equality, === for identity

ypercubeᵀᴹ

9:57 AM

@dezso and ==== ?

dezso

==== for a syntax error (not completely sure about this)

but I prefer talking about Clojure these days

(defn === [var1 var2] (identical? var1 var2))
(= (str "a" 1) (str "a" 1))
(=== (str "a" 1) (str "a" 1))

Phil

This happened after the database automatically restarted. Is it normal for the database to automatically restart itself? The error message also says "Unknown/unsupported storage engine", I was looking for knowledge, not speculation. — vladkornea 38 mins ago

"I was looking for knowledge, not speculation" -- how to annoy Phil

Tom V

10:14 AM

@Phil Looking at his profile page he is the LAMP expert after all

Phil

10:54 AM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ read the first sentence in the question :P 5.5.49

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@Phil Seems like a weird bug then.

I have tried to keep by installation free from mysql so I can only test at SQL fiddle.

The results seems the same 9qand buggy) but the version there is older

Paul White

@Phil Well to be fair opening with "Did you even read the log file?" kinda got you off on the wrong foot.

profile 101

hi all, is mysqlI still don't support for "named parameter" & "prepared statements" ?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@profile101 You can ask that in the PHP room

profile 101

thanks @ypercubeᵀᴹ

Phil

11:03 AM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ I have answered, because I am awesome

@PaulWhite yeah, you're right

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@Phil Oh, f*** me.

Still seems like a very weird bug/behaviour. Without GROUP BY, 0-1 gives -1. With GROUP BY, 0-1 gives 0

Totally expected from mySQL

Phil

Indeed

Paul White

@Phil I made some edits, feel free to roll back if you disagree. I won't be upset :)

Phil

@PaulWhite It's fine mate

Paul White

Sweet as then.

Phil

11:09 AM

My grumpt often needs editing away :P

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@Phil "mate" is for Australians ;)

Phil

@ypercubeᵀᴹ I was once told that an Aussie doesn't like you if they call you "mate". If they call you a "c**t" they DO like you :) Don't know if there's any truth in it

Paul White

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Maaaaate in the accent.

Tom V

@Phil Everything is backwards in those parts of the world. Their nicknames, their seasons, the direction the toilets flush...

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@Phil Sounds about right

Paul White

11:13 AM

Tom is so funny. He'll soon be the new Bill.

Phil

Where's TomTom these days? And MrDenny?

Banned again. heh

Paul White

Denny's super busy working and flying around the world.

Paul White

11:43 AM

0

Q: Burninate the [dba] and [database-administration] tags?

The database-administration and dba tags are used on 1039 and 148 questions respectively. They seem useless to me (on a site called Database Administrators) but I am curious as to how others feel. Should we burninate (delete) these tags? It would leave 15 unclosed questions tagless, but we cou...

discussion tagging

Seeing as master database seems to be asleep.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite it's lagging usually. It will wake up and double post in a few minutes (or hours)

Paul White

I was expecting it straight away. That's what usually happens.

After I posted the link manually I mean.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

ah

But for the meta q, 1000 questions don't seem enough for the tag to be kept.

Just because it conflicts with the site's name?

Only discussing by the way, I haven't made up my mind or seriously thoguth about this really

Paul White

That's a big part of it. Mostly I don't see what value it adds. Looking for opinions though, I'm not 100% convinced.

Tom V

I'm not sure how you would retag the question I answered in that tag. human-resources doesn't sound like a tag we need here :)

Paul White

11:47 AM

@TomV Which question?

Tom V

13

Q: Metrics to prove or disprove the need for additional DBA's?

We currently have 2 DBA’s, me and one other guy and we both feel the need for an additional resource (or two). I have had the conversation with my direct manager on this topic a couple different times, but am having difficulty in getting the notion sold. Most recently our manager shared with us t...

dba

But maybe the entire question can be considered off-topic (it was closed at some point)

Paul White

questions-tom-has-answered

:-D

Tom V

That's a gold tag-badge I might be able to actually earn at some point

Paul White

Ha!

Tom V

I've been less active around here for so long I have an entire backlog of silly jokes, just so you're warned

Paul White

11:51 AM

Always good to set expectations.

Andriy M

However hard it may then be to live up to them.

Paul White

@AndriyM You're right about the synonym thing. That's where I started - thinking about making dba a synonym - but then I wondered why we have them at all, and what sort of question couldn't be tagged with one or both.

@TomV If questions about human resources are on-topic then perhaps we do?

Tom V

@PaulWhite But how many questions would fit that tag?

Andriy M

12:07 PM

@TomV You mean, is there much to ask about DBAs? Like "Why are they grumpy?" and... that's it?

2

Paul White

@TomV One?

I'll check at some point.

Tom V

I remember a question like that "why are dba's hard on developers" or something

63

A: How could DBAs be more 'programmer friendly'?

I've been a MySQL DBA for the past 6.5 years. I've also spent some 16 years as a developer and have interacted with many DBAs. Many of them pragmatic. Some of them obnoxious. A few have no idea what it means to be a DBA. I have come to this conclusion: Technically speaking, DBAs who have one or...

or

92

Q: Why is Database Administration so hard?

I know a lot of Database Administrators and they are all over 28-29 years old. Is all database administration like that? I mean, is this about getting experience more than at least 7-8 years? Or is being a database administrator so hard?

database-administration learning management

could maybe be related enough to make up a tag for them

Paul White

Both locked, currently off-topic.

Tom V

Anyway, I don't feel much in favor of the dba tag either, and if the metrics question is the only one preventing it maybe the question should be if that one is off-topic like the 2 other ones

It kind of falls between what is on topic according to the help center but could lean close to "career advice" maybe

which is off-topic

Paul White

Looking through it seems most questions about DBAs (the people) and their duties etc. have been considered off-topic.

@TomV But this is all slightly a different question. If nothing else, we could tag the tom-answered question that started all this with [sql-server] for the time being until we come to some sort of consensus.

Tom V

12:17 PM

The question was closed as off-topic at some point

Paul White

Tagging is hard I guess.

@TomV Yes. Opinion-based if memory serves. You might even have asked in here for it to be reopened.

Tom V

@PaulWhite That's what I think, but I can't seem to find it using the search

but I think I asked for reopening

Paul White

Search is hard I guess.

To be clear though: I personally think it is a useful Q & A to have here. I'm just not sure how to tag it.

Perhaps I should unliterally migrate it to Workplace and forget it ever existed :)

(jokes)

Tom V

Can a question not exist without tags?

Paul White

@TomV It gets untagged and comes up in a report of, um, untagged questions.

JNK

12:23 PM

for context, there's no "Programming" tag on SO

Paul White

That one is intrinsic if I remember my meta.SE properly.

Tom V

But hey, since Paul said It would leave 15 unclosed questions tagless, but we could easily deal with that. this should be easy right :)

Lamak

@JNK a ghost!!!

JNK

yeah like adminstration here :)

HEY LAMAK

I am trying to be less ghostly

just been hard

busy busy busy

Lamak

you mean since the last 2 minutes?

Andriy M

12:25 PM

JNK

@Lamak Been busy the last year :)

I was just about to post a job on careers and realized I have not been in here in a while

so here I am

Lamak

ah, that explains it

Paul White

@TomV For certain values of 'easy'.

3

A: Is there a way to blacklist arbitrary text, like for spam reduction?

There is a blacklist; it's most often used for tags (like intrinsic tags, so Programming can't exist on Stack Overflow) or to temporarily block posts with a certain (spam) URL. It's developer-only, but moderators can (and do) ask a dev/the community team to block a URL/text. As a normal user I'd ...

There's probably a better example.

JNK

@Lamak My boss quit about a year ago, I got his job, and it's been a time drain ever since

Master Database

2

Q: Burninate the [dba] and [database-administration] tags?

The database-administration and dba tags are used on 1039 and 148 questions respectively. They seem useless to me (on a site called Database Administrators) but I am curious as to how others feel. Should we burninate (delete) these tags? It would leave 15 unclosed questions tagless, but we cou...

discussion tagging

Paul White

12:28 PM

@AndriyM Yeah but it can happen on migration, or when tags get deleted by the system, or a manual process.

Andriy M

Well done, Master Database

Paul White

Yeah congrats.

Andriy M

@PaulWhite I see

Lamak

@JNK I heard that @PaulWhite likes to be a boss, you can ask him

Paul White

@Lamak Oh shush.

Lamak

12:29 PM

sure b...I mean, sure @PaulWhite

Paul White

:)

JNK

Mr. Kiwi Sir

Paul White

@JNK Think of the $$$!

JNK

@PaulWhite oh no I have been

Obviously I took it but I dropped of the site

for want of time

Paul White

Good on you. We've coped, just about :'(

JNK

12:31 PM

I DID mark myself inactive at least, eventually

Paul White

Yes!

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@JNK you are hiring for your old position?

JNK

@ypercubeᵀᴹ yeah basically

I tried last year, didn't get any good applicants and just sucked it up and kept doing it

I'll share it here once it's posted

Seems like everyone is becoming consultants though!

Paul White

12:47 PM

0

Q: AlwaysOn Availability Groups with Different subnets

Am Successfully configured the Always On with different sub nets. but I have one small glitch here every time am manually flushed out the DNS (command prompt ipconfig /flushdns) while fail over is occurred. Please do the needful.

sql-server availability-groups

> Please do the needful

@TomV How about "capacity planning"? Also, I've often wondered why we don't have some sort of "metrics" tag.

Tom V

Adding a metrics tag is the most elegant solution so far

There are plenty of questions that could be tagged like that

dba.stackexchange.com/search?q=metrics

Paul White

@JNK That's so last year. Everyone's going to work for Microsoft now.

JNK

@PaulWhite oh sweet

Paul White

MVP now stands for Microsoft Vice President.

@TomV Agreed.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite and work with Linux at the same time ;)

Paul White

12:52 PM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ I no longer understand the world I live in!

Tom V

@PaulWhite re-tag as metrics then?

Paul White

@TomV Done.

Tom V

aww, my taxonomist badge :(

JK

Paul White

@TomV Oh! Sorry!

(not sorry)

2

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite I imagine you deep into Linux-SQLServer internals in 3 years

Paul White

12:53 PM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Would that mean growing a beard?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

after a few posts in the site tagged with both sql-server and linux

Tom V

@PaulWhite even worse looking at .so (instead of dll)

Paul White

The horror.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite No, that's optional. Unless (or until?) MS open source SQL Server

Paul White

Not much would surprise me at this point.

Tom V

12:55 PM

Scrambles to open photoshop and add a beard to paul's face

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@TomV and a Linux terminal in the background

Paul White

Freezes chat room indefinitely

DELETE TOP (1) DBASE.dbo.Badges WHERE UserName = 'TomV';

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Voted to bring this here: stackoverflow.com/questions/39780759/using-parenthesis-in-sql

Paul White

@ypercubeᵀᴹ You intending to add an awesome answer?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Awesome, I don't know. Answer, yes.

Paul White

12:58 PM

Vote added.

Tom V

I could very well be a bot

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@TomV I was reading an article about wikipedia-bots the other day.

Lamak

@TomV you wish

Paul White

@TomV Always suspected as much.

@AndriyM All 15 retagged.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Didn't know that they use bots extensively

Funny thing, the article showed some edit wars between bots

Andriy M

1:05 PM

@PaulWhite I'm curious, thanks (congrats?)

Lamak

47

Q: A New Silver Badge That Robots Simply Can't Win

We don't do a lot of socialization on Stack Overflow, or even Meta Stack Overflow. In fact, we really don't do any socializing. But, that doesn't mean being social and having informal conversations is bad in any way, we'd just rather that folks do it somewhere else. Somewhere else turns out to ...

discussion badges

Paul White

@AndriyM Thanks for your contribution too.

Phil

If only there were 50 heapers

Paul White

529 all time users according to the stats.

Lamak

@Phil that would be madness

or great, I don't know

Phil

1:11 PM

I'm not sure the world could cope with 50 regular Heapers :-)

Andriy M

mad greatness

Paul White

@swasheck leads with 49,910 messages.

Lamak

gooo @swasheck

@PaulWhite where can you see that info?

Paul White

@Lamak Stats page I linked to above. Little grey number in the right hand corner of each user's box.

Lamak

1:27 PM

@PaulWhite aha, damn little grey number

Andriy M

For me, the number doesn't show for users that aren't in the room, but it shows for me in that user's profile.

Phil

Nearly half a million messages. Wow

Andriy M

Half a hundred thousand, but who's counting :)

Lamak

@Phil no no, nearly half a hundred thousand

@AndriyM if you click on the "frequently in room" link, then it shows even if the users aren't currently in the chat room

Phil

What's the 439384 number then?

Lamak

1:30 PM

@Phil aaah, for the whole room?, yeah

I thought you were talking about @swasheck's

(and I think @AndriyM thought the same)

Andriy M

So did I. Sorry @Phil

@Lamak That worked, thanks.

Lamak

yeah, sorry @Phil

Phil

It's ok, my bad. Context is king

Paul White

Half a million messages sounds like a lot. But half a million rows, not so much.

Our chat database table probably is a Heap :)

Lamak

it better be

is half a million comments that much?

I mean, how old is this chat room?

5 years apparently

ypercubeᵀᴹ

1:33 PM

@PaulWhite If not, it would be the first Heap with a Clustered Index,

Paul White

> first message 2011-01-03

@ypercubeᵀᴹ That would be kinda fitting for us though.

i.e. makes no sense at all

Tom V

If we continue at this pace stackexchange might need to switch to mongodb to accommodate that many rows

/ducks

Lamak

aaaw

Paul White

Ghost stars!

Lamak

so, 500,000 comments in 5 years, 100,000 per year, with approximately 260 weekdays per year, we have 385 comments a day

not really that much

we are lacking

swasheck

1:37 PM

@PaulWhite I'd like to see the time series analysis on that

Paul White

@swasheck 89 to go

swasheck

Also I'm known to not type complete thoughts so many of my messages are 10 posts, 1 "thought"

Paul White

@swasheck Yeah I don't think we can get that though. What do you think it would show?

Andriy M

88

Paul White

New game: counting down @swasheck's all time messages to 50,000.

DBAs are more silly than grumpy it seems.

Lamak

1:40 PM

but you people made @swasheck silent now

Andriy M

Or more thoughtful.

Paul White

Chat accounts are automatically deleted at 50,000 so he's probably making the last 88 count.

2

dezso

@AndriyM or just writing all his thoughts in one monster post

JNK

2:43 PM

hey here's my job

2

SQL Server Engineer

Arrowsight

sql-serversql-server-2008-r2powershelldata-modeling

Are you passionate about SQL Server programming, data modeling, and database reliability? Come join us! You'll be…

Posted on Stack Overflow Careers on September 30, 2016

Lamak

You must be permanently authorized to work in the United States. :-(

JNK

yeah sorry

We know from experience it is very hard to do the green card thing

Are you looking, @Lamak?

dezso

@JNK I have some cards of other colours

does it count?

Lamak

@JNK ah, yeah, that and the fact that I don't want to live in the US

@JNK just keeping attention

JNK

Well I'm open to remote for the right person for sure

But we don't advertise that because then you get a bunch of not-so-great applicants from all over

Did that last time

@dezso If you can work in the US sure! :)

We have also discussed doing a remote contractor thing if needed

Lamak

2:48 PM

@JNK I can imagine that

billinkc

3:02 PM

@JNK YOU SAID THAT WAS CONFIDENTIAL

JNK

@billinkc Well I didn't name names yet

billinkc

Might as well have, jerk

JNK

I didn't even mention Missourah

Aren't you in contracting now, @billinkc?

billinkc

Nope, FT as a consultant

and we're hiring if you're BI or just BI curious

JNK

Nope I make The DBA™ do all the BI/reporting stuff now

Lamak

3:17 PM

@billinkc I knew who he was talking about right away

ypercubeᵀᴹ

3:33 PM

@JNK can I send you an email? I don't hink I have your address

Lamak

come on @JNK, don't disappear now

JNK

@ypercubeᵀᴹ yeah sure thing

bluefeet

incoming spam @JNK :P

JNK

huzzah

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@JNK thnx

JNK

3:42 PM

NP

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@ypercubeᵀᴹ I think you've missed the purpose. The table fields are not relevant to the question. Those are in fact not even fields on the table it was just a few things i threw in there to visually show we have 2 tables. Sorry if that was confusing. The question is simply should we create a new table for Company or add the fields directly on each of the tables. — ozz 44 secs ago

Yeah, I am confused

ypercubeᵀᴹ

3:58 PM

On more serious issues

57

Q: How to book a flight if my passport doesn't state my gender?

I am asking on behalf of my friend. My friend doesn't have a gender (in other words they are gender-neutral) and on their new passport their gender is represented as X (indeterminate/unspecified). Previously booking a flight wasn't an issue because their previous passports stated they were a wom...

air-travel passports legal bookings

dezso

4:27 PM

@ozz I'd say create a company table, because it simply a better, cleaner feeling. — dezso 13 secs ago

well, yes, it's already beer o'clock

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@dezso the question is not good. I did not downvote, only because it's a new user

But he is satisfied with the equally good answer, so who are we to complain?

I guess the grumpiness reaches the highest level at Fridays, before beer o'clock

(the=my)

Andriy M

I thought at first to let it be, but ultimately I don't understand what they are trying to do. Both tables need to have a Company attached to them – what does that mean? Will one row from one table and one from the other need to reference the same company?

I've voted to close as "unclear" too

They may well be satisfied with the answer they've got but the question doesn't seem useful to me.

MDCCL

5:41 PM

@TomV Unfortunately the situation in that question & answer has gotten a bit untidy, but I will work on clarifying the business requirements (with the help of the OP, of course) and will condense both the question and the answer once we get the requirements more clearly defined. Of course, other points of view can help to provide a better answer :)

ypercubeᵀᴹ

good luck with that (clarifying)

Tom V

@MDCCL It still deserved more than the one or 2 votes it had at the time

IMO of course, but seeing the score now it looks as if somebody agreed

And you know I'm not the guy to ask for a point of view on database design except if you want somebody to say "hey it should feel natural" :D

@ypercubeᵀᴹ "asking for a friend"

ypercubeᵀᴹ

6:04 PM

I wonder how one becomes gender-neutral.

Is there a procedure in some countries that you go to some registry and you declare: "I want to change from M to X "?

Perhaps I should a question at SE. Which site would be appropriate?

Tom V

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Read this recently: thecollegefix.com/post/29230

@JNK Any relocation support? (asking for a friend :))

MDCCL

6:21 PM

@TomV Thank you. And yes, I totally agree, a (relational) database structure should feel natural, that's a very important point. If things feel forced, it's a common sign that something's not coherent, consistent or does not reflect the real world situation accurately. But, yes, that's my personal point of view as well.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@TomV Some puzzle from a decade ago: littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=1&topic=1519

JNK

@TomV Not yet!

I am open to remote potentially like I said, just not advertising it

maybe not from Belgium tho! :)

Paul White

6:53 PM

@JNK You don't mention having to work with The DBA™ in the advert.

bluefeet

:O

Andriy M

@PaulWhite Should be mentioned as a skill, I think. Or a nice-to-have at least.

Paul White

@AndriyM Essential skill: ability to tolerate The DBA™

Andriy M

Along those lines

Paul White

Perhaps he has mellowed over time.

But the stories JNK used to tell...

Andriy M

7:04 PM

@PaulWhite He might, what with his new boss being more tech-savvy than the previous one, as I understand.

Paul White

I heard the new manager was worse :)

JNK

@PaulWhite I would let you not have to deal with him!

and no he has not mellowed over time

though I keep him out of design/development work and he mainly manages hardware and reports

which he is pretty competent at

Andriy M

Is he happy with such a change?

JNK

Hard to tell

He hasn't increased the volume or frequency of complaints

I'm happy with it which is much more important to me ;)

Andriy M

And, as a bonus, it's beneficial to keeping things working more or less smoothly, I guess :)

JNK

7:18 PM

yeah it's made my life easier for sure

Paul White

That's the main thing.

Paul White

7:34 PM

I see that Socratic badge has now been awarded.

Tom V

8:08 PM

Finally ........

ypercubeᵀᴹ

9:52 PM

Do the needful

"Do the needful" is an expression which means "do that which is needed", with the respectful implication that the other party is trusted to understand what needs doing without being given detailed instruction. The phrase is common in Indian English as well as in many African countries such as Kenya where it is commonly found in formal business correspondence. There has been recent interest in the phrase especially in the context of globalized Call Centers. The expression is currently used mainly in Indian English, although some parody references in English literature exist imitating South Asian...

MIJ1974

10:15 PM

Hey guys, I have a database design question, and I was hoping someone could enlighten me.

SQL Server Engineer

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