The Heap™ – Consultancy ©® - 2016-12-01 (page 1 of 2)

12:28 AM

Detective work:

It's not really that long of a story. This is a homework problem you're asking us to help you solve. Northern Virginia Community College ITN 170. coursehero.com/file/13907290/passwdadded Please be slightly more honest when you're asking the questions. — John Deters 4 hours ago

Paul White

4:46 AM

@AndriyM @ypercubeᵀᴹ @dezso Kinda relying on you guys to indicate which comments are obsolete there and to add an answer at some point if possible. Cheers.

I'm kinda curious myself to understand what the reason for the slowdown is. Increasing versions of changed rows?

@TomV You can accept your meta answer now.

It's not a real database. We should close those questions and send them to Super User. — Evan Carroll 3 hours ago

ha ha ha

Paul White

5:16 AM

At least SQL Server packs bit columns efficiently regardless of metadata location. No weird alignment requirements.

Andriy M

6:15 AM

@PaulWhite @ypercubeᵀᴹ @dezso They all appear obsolete to me after the latest edit by @ypercubeᵀᴹ.

Evan Carroll

6:39 AM

StackExchange sucks.

What's the process of migrating a question from SO here, we flag it and then the ops at StackOverflow ignore the flags because they thing everything is on topic there?

What's the future of this community when all the branding is behind StackOverflow and nothing gets migrated because their domain was never narrowed when new community sites sprung up?

If you were to tag-query all of the sure fire database-only questions on StackOverflow, you would find that StackOverflow saturates the database questions targeted to the platform. That should be an indicator of a huge problem.

If I look at [postgresql] there were more questions in the past 4 hours than dba.SE got all day on PostgreSQL. So not just is this more niche, but it has less traffic and it's probably growing at a smaller rate and just dividing expertise within the SE network.

Paul White

@EvanCarroll If you see a particular question that belongs here, feel free to one-box into this chat room and explain its merits. A number of the regulars here have VtC on SO.

Evan Carroll

What is VtC?

Paul White

Vote to Close (belongs on... in the case of migrations)

55

Q: Stack Overflow vs Database Administrators

I was just about to ask a database related question (involving translations between SQL and MySQL) when I remembered that there's a whole site in the Stack Exchange network dedicated to databases! But then I thought to myself, "Hmm... Which site should I put my database question on?" So I check...

Evan Carroll

Oh, I have VtC close too. That's just half the issue. I'm not sure how many VtC's you need to get the migration. I've been using my 50 a day.

The big problem is the one the SE is totally ignoring and not failing to address. It should be addressed programatically and with a change in social policy as new sites move out of beta and chip away from the trilogy.

Paul White

@EvanCarroll Five total. I believe 4/5 need to be for close for migration to work on SO.

Evan Carroll

6:51 AM

For instance, if your only tag is postgresql that question shouldn't even be allowed on StackOverflow. It should automatically be migrated or the user should be pointed to dba.se.

Paul White

That's a big question. See the meta.SO Q & A above for some recent-ish changes in emphasis on their side (it seems to me anyway).

I don't personally have a huge problem with the current arrangement. Database questions can be on-topic in both places (but only one at a time!) There are different audiences, so answers are quite likely to be from different perspectives at least. I'm pretty sure the community here is not in favour of a sudden huge increase in volume and presumed lowering of average question quality.

Big topic though.

Evan Carroll

Wow, that you answer you gave is ridiculous. That's gotta get revised.

Paul White

Similar sort of thing on our local meta:

11

Q: Why are there so many database questions on StackOverflow and when should they be posted here instead?

This is a pretty straightforward meta question (I hope). Why are there so many database questions in StackOverflow and when should they be posted here instead? What is the criteria for when it goes on SO vs DBA?

discussion

@EvanCarroll Well you know how meta works :) Add a competing answer?

Evan Carroll

There is no way you can maintain a position that only encourages questions that are specialized enough so as if to exclude junior level and entry-level questions on enterprise products.

Paul White

@EvanCarroll Are you referring to Pekka's answer or mine?

Evan Carroll

6:57 AM

Yours. I skipped to yours.

Paul White

@EvanCarroll I'm not seeing that message in my answer?

Unless you mean the reference to our current on-topic page I guess.

Evan Carroll

"By 'database professional' there, I mean someone whose work and experience is specialized to one or more database or database-related products." That's quite elitist and hardly how you grow a community. Under that plank the community will struggle to reproduce itself. People will make SO their one stop shop and never grow up.

It begs the question, rather than addressing it. That question being, when does the submission demand a different forum. It implies that someone who isn't a database professional that's learning the craft will one day feel confident enough to move to a different forum while they still have questions. But developing from an amateur to a professional isn't like that. It's a continuum of growth on a slope, not a jot down the street and a jump to a new height.

Paul White

I would say a beginner can be a database professional if that's the primary focus of their activity. It's tough to get the wording right for everyone. Certainly not intended to be elitist or exclusive, just defining one of the main differences I perceive between dba and SO.

The original proposal for dba was quite clear on the "expert-level questions" thing . I'm not sure we all still feel that way. We do debate it from time to time on meta. It would be a big shift, though some would argue good basic questions are already often de facto on topic since they are answered and not closed/migrated.

Having dinner now. Happy to continue later.

Evan Carroll

But, that's a bizarre difference and it's elitist. You view SO as being questions that are simply less skilled and demanding about databases. SO is a professional site in and of itself. There are programmers that can read the code of PostgreSQL and are likely better than lot of database administrators here that can hardly rtfm.

The easier and more professional distinction would be to separate the domain on the question and not the skill level of whomever asked it. If the question doesn't involve programming in some non-sql language or a libraries or api, then it's certainly off-topic for S…

Andriy M

7:40 AM

@EvanCarroll Having a growing community isn't a goal in itself. The goal is collecting answers to common, and perhaps not so common, questions in a specific knowledge domain. A community, growing or not, is just a means of achieving the goal. If it so happens that the community needs to grow to process the incoming flood of questions bringing them, as well as the answers to them, to an established format and level of quality, so be it. The growth shouldn't harm the ultimate goal.

Evan Carroll

None of that was even remotely well thought out.

Questions in a vacuum serving no one discrete from the community that asks them and needs their answers: that's the goal.

Tom V

@EvanCarroll That may be what you (or some askers) consider the goal, but writing someone else's code in my spare time is not something I particularly enjoy

Evan Carroll

But answering their high level questions when you're a skilled professional in the field who gets paid in that very line of work -- that's what you like to do in your free time? If it's about the stature of being a highly skilled professional tackling hard questions consider giving your clients a 100% discount.

Tom V

It also seems to encourage FGITW races to provide only a wall of code solving the OP's problem by people who's goal is to get rep as fast as possible

Evan Carroll

What are we talking about? Here, or StackOverflow?

Tom V

7:49 AM

SO

In my case I like to provide longer answers that could possibly help future googlers learn, just as I benefited a lot in the past from finding other peoples posts hopefully contributing to the quality of the community and development as a whole

Solving very localized questions only helps the OP and nobody else

Evan Carroll

Because this is probably my first month being active on DBA.SO, and I'm in your top 3% this month which tells you just how dead and unhealthy this community is. Not to mention despite your rhetoric about skill, the questions are easy as piss here compared to the questions on SO. And, part of the reason is because they care about the community and not just end product.

They cater to the community so well, people don't want to leave when their question hits a certain threshold just so they can join the elitist kids.

Tom V

it could get me rep, but that's not really something I care about

And I don't get why a new user (but experienced on the network) being able to be in the top 3 for the month in their first month is a bad thing

Especially not if they're awesome

Andriy M

@EvanCarroll Your being among the top answerers might mean you were active answering questions but not necessarily so looking for existing duplicates.

Tom V

Good point by @AndriyM

For example one of the things I like to do is change a title so it caters better to google searches and edit the question/answer so it's more readable and more useful to future searchers

that doesn't get me a single unicorn point, and I edit a lot more than I answer

Evan Carroll

Well that's easy.. Most of it is because you don't have many questions on this site. Most of that is because the community that asks the questions are both legitimately confused as to where they should direct them, and more welcomed in the other non-elitist forum. I'm trying to solve those problems and I'm getting lots of excrement about how the other questions are too simple, how they're just for exp, and how people should only come here if they're super l33t h4x0r consultants.

Tom V

7:57 AM

Not sure how you got to that conclusion

Evan Carroll

So I'm challenging the elitist notion and arguing the best method to define the site is by content, and not the professional status of the questioner. That way this doesn't just become a circle jerk of elitists.

Tom V

The community does answer a lot of the simpler questions as long as they are not too localized which is off-topic for the site

Evan Carroll

So in practice, what I would say is that if a question is tagged with postgresql and nothing else (or god forbid, even sql-server) that the question be deemed off limits for Stack Overflow, and suitable for this site.

Tom V

And I was only explaining what I like to do around here, I don't speak for anybody else

@EvanCarroll If the question is "hey I wrote this T-SQL can you spot the typo" it's off topic here, that was a decision I wasn't involved in

And this is a non discussion anyway

Evan Carroll

If we accepted and advocated for that position with SO, we could expect (a) more questions, (b) more awareness of DBA.se, (c) a site with a less subjective and in-the-eyes-of-experts distinction.

Tom V

8:02 AM

this is a community, not something I I or you decide on how it should be run, but the community as a whole does

Evan Carroll

@TomV did you bother to read the backlog then with @PaulWhite before you chimed in?

Tom V

You can be active the way you want, if enough people agree there is meta to discuss the direction the community should head

Evan Carroll

If we're deciding as a whole, that's good. That's what I want. I just want to challenge the current method because it's absurd.

Tom V

If enough people in the community act the same way the community will head in a direction naturally

And yes I read your backlog, as I said I don't see how you got to the conclusion that we don't want junior level questions here

Andriy M

I think mentioning the professional status in the site description has to do with the primary target audience, as well as with the desired tone or level of quality of the questions and answers.

Tom V

8:11 AM

I think the fundamental divide is not which questions go on what site, but what the regulars on the site like to do

Andriy M

You don't have to be a database professional as long as you agree to maintain the established quality.

Tom V

Askers want their problem solved, Answerers/regulars are here, in their free time, to do what they enjoy doing

Evan Carroll

@AndriyM which would be fine but that is being used to defend the status quo of Stack Overflow.

And the status quo of Stack Overflow is to not-close questions that fit their community's definition which does not currently exclude database-questions because they perceive that this site is not created for questions that are explicitly database-oriented, but only questions that require unique and specialized skill which also isn't off topic there because SO is a site for professionals.

And, that's the problem.

Andriy M

@EvanCarroll I don't see a problem with some database-related questions being on-topic on both sites. I wholeheartedly agree with the points in Paul's meta answer. I don't believe the fact that a question is about SQL, alone, should define where the question belongs.

Tom V

Some database questions could be on topic on superuser or serverfault too, depending on what type of people you want to answer it

Andriy M

8:15 AM

So I'm also of the opinion that it's about perspective. A developer's perspective vs a database professional's.

Evan Carroll

Right, and that's why Stack Overflow has more questions about the database, more questions about sql, and because of the community, more specialized questions about both. Also why I'm here in the top 3% this month and the site is dragging along as a club for elitists rather than an asset that could benefit a great amount of people.

Andriy M

@EvanCarroll I just don't care about that. (I don't see a problem with this site either.)

Evan Carroll

It's like talking to a post-modernist. I'm not sure why it's worth trying.

The perspective of the person asking the question defines the community.

Andriy M

Besides, why should it look as though we are competing against SO in who gets more database-related questions? Google makes them equally accessible to anyone.

Evan Carroll

The identity politics of Stack Exchange at work.

Andriy M

8:18 AM

@EvanCarroll No, the perspective of the desired answer defines the community.

Evan Carroll

lulz.

Again, not even remotely well thought out.

Tom V

I'm getting out of this non argument, it could be had in the superuser or security chat room because they should compete with serverfault, or in the programmers chat room how they should compete with SO or whatever

there is some overlap in the questions, there is some overlap in the answerers, there is a different perspective

which is what defines the communities

Evan Carroll

ServerFault has a clear mission. They long since stopped playing these games.

If you're using residential stuff, the question is off-limit.

Tom V

So have we

If you're looking for a typo in your code, this isn't the place to ask

Evan Carroll

Nonsense. A few elitists ranting about perspectives is suitable for a philosophy meetup. Not a tech site.

Andriy M

8:23 AM

@EvanCarroll We aren't ranting about perspectives. It's you how seems to have issues with that.

Evan Carroll

Right, I'm asking you to define the site without subjective claims about perspective.

Tom V

You like audience better as a word then?

Andriy M

@EvanCarroll That would be a loaded question.

Evan Carroll

There is no substance. There isn't even a semblance of argument aside from elitist perspective. So I'm providing one but I am open to others.

Tom V

you aren't open to others obviously

Evan Carroll

8:24 AM

No "audience" isn't a better word. Lol. That's just defining the audience again by perspective. It's elitist blather.

Tom V

uhu

Evan Carroll

I'm asking you to provide an argument.

I am providing an argument.

It has clear benefits.

You've got the status-quo (which has evident and clear problems), and a fall-back to a totally inane claim to perspective/audience/(next novel term introduced that means the same thing).

For the record, it was here where I laid down concrete benefits of defining the site rather than playing the elitist games: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/179?m=33840973#33840973

Tom V

As I explained, the only way to change the community, if you wish to do so, is being part of it and hoping enough people feel the same

and then posting on meta

in here you are only arguing with a very small subset of people, who happen to enjoy hanging around in this particular chat box

Evan Carroll

I agree with that.

Tom V

we're not a sort of shadow government that can decide on any directions, the community does

ypercubeᵀᴹ

8:38 AM

We are only good at jeagl. The other room tags are cover ;)

3

Evan Carroll

how come you're so quite on the matter?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

TypoSickness must be contagious

Tom V

because people are here to enjoy themselves, and maybe they aren't enjoying this

Evan Carroll

Does @ypercubeᵀᴹ need a shadow government to speak for him/her/zir?

Andriy M

@EvanCarroll None of that looks to me like a benefit in itself. What's the point of having a ton of rubbish questions only because they are about databases? What's the point of DBA.SE being more visible if it means more of that rubbish? I realise that you seem to think this community is stagnant – I clearly cannot see that. I guess it's a matter of, sorry, perspective. I'm not entirely sure about (c) but if it boils down to "being less elitist", if a little elitism helps the quality, I don't mind.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

8:40 AM

@EvanCarroll Who's he?

Evan Carroll

corrected*

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Perhaps "he" was asleep

Philᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll This site is far from dead, and the community is not unhealthy. As far as SE verticals go, we're 13th traffic-wise. We're also not elitist, we just don't want a million crap questions that have been answered a million times over on SO already. We're more or less at the point where the easy stuff has already been answered on here.

Evan Carroll

Just out of curiosity both of you guys are playing up this same nonsense, how about you both give me an approximation to the signal-to-noise ratio you see on StackOverflow?

Philᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll To be honest, I'm not interested in playing your troll games. We're a decent bunch & the site is just fine without you attempting a Trump

Evan Carroll

8:52 AM

Ah, there we go. It's a "troll" game when you ask to quantify bogus claims about "crap questions" by a team that doesn't like concrete definitions because the community should be defined by perspective. After all "if elitism helps the quality" #TeamStatusQuo doesn't mind, they shouldn't have to even establish that quality is an issue.

Tom V

Yes it's a troll game

Mark Sinkinson

Is he still here?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll There are a lot of crap questions and answers at SO.

It's hard not to have so much crap, with the size of the traffic.

@EvanCarroll take a look at this user's answers for example: stackoverflow.com/users/1144035/…

Tens of answers every day.

Most of them just code, no explanation added. Many of them wrong.

Yet the user is in the top-10, sometimes even top-1 user at SO, simply by answering the same (SQL) questions every day, relentlessly.

Do we want this at DBA.SE?

I don't.

2

Evan Carroll

Ok, so if we can break that down without name calling -- Gordon clearly has an insane amount of devotion. Are the questions he's answering the problem, or the answers themselves?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

And to address some other parts of the previous discussion (not sure if I missed reading something), you seem to argue that there are a lot postgres, sql, etc. questions at SE compared with dba.se I'm not sure if I agree but lets say I do for the moment.

Evan Carroll

9:00 AM

Well, look at the last one Gordon answered.

That's a great example of a question that should be here, imho stackoverflow.com/q/40902420/124486

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Is refusing all sql,postgresql, etc question from SO a solution? I don't hink many would agree. And your attitude, calling every different opinion nonsense, doesn't help persuading others.

@EvanCarroll Why not? His answers are crap.

Evan Carroll

In fairness, I'm only calling one opinion nonsense. It keeps coming in different flavors. And, that is that the perspectives of the people asking and answering matter. As if they weren't expert enough. I am concerned if these are crap questions. I've seen some pretty bad questions asked on both sides. They get answered very quick (often by people like Gordon) without getting closed, and then things move on.

Tom V

@ypercubeᵀᴹ SQL Server questions should be over at superuser apparently

It's not a real database. We should close those questions and send them to Super User. — Evan Carroll 7 hours ago

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll Yeah, I think we have similar questions/answers here. Do you want me to go and test his answer? because 99% of times I have done it, he had some mistake.

@EvanCarroll Yeah, I agree on that.

deostroll

What is the point of adding a foreign key reference when the target table field isn't a primary key? Or does it require that the target table field we are referring to needs a primary key reference?

Evan Carroll

9:05 AM

No, I'm not defending Gordon. But we have to establish whether or not we have solved the Gordon problem, or whether or not we haven't had that problem simply because we're missing all these great questions (like the last one Gordon tried to address) stackoverflow.com/q/40902420/124486

ypercubeᵀᴹ

I sometimes answer and flag as "too localized", so it gets closed. So in this site, th eprecentage of such questions closed is higher.

Andriy M

@deostroll Yes, the target column's being the PK is commonly a requirement. In some platforms the target is also allowed to have a unique constraint defined on it, instead of the PK, to allow the FK to be created.

Paul White

@deostroll I believe it is required in most products. Some allow the target to have a uniqueness constraint/index or a primary key.

@AndriyM Snap!

Andriy M

:)

Philᵀᴹ

aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/… Interesting

Evan Carroll

9:08 AM

I'm saying I can envision a system where we pick up these questions that Gordon is answering (because I don't think you're right to call them crap, 75-90% of the SO questions are perfectly good, and here it's probably like 90-95% guesstimating). So, SO has more crap, but we're off imho if we pretend like it's most crap, or that we would be better if we picked up their questions that addressed the db subject matter (taking the good with the bad).

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Your proposed solution (baning SQL questions from SO) has 2 or 3 problems:
First, we have to have dba.se community to agree on that.
Second, we have persuade SO to agree on that and stop accepting these questions.

Evan Carroll

@Philᵀᴹ also just got HIPA certified.

deostroll

But don't we sometimes need multiple columns to constitute a primary key...?

Andriy M

@deostroll If multiple columns are a PK, they may be referenced by multiple columns only as well.

Paul White

@deostroll A key can be composite, yes. A foreign key can also be composite.

Andriy M

9:09 AM

Again...

Paul White

echo off

Evan Carroll

@ypercubeᵀᴹ yes, those are certainly problems. but I think it would be better to have clearer boarders for both and when this convo started we were looking at an mso post where this was evidently a real problem (as others had brought it up) and were trying to address it. I'm just unsatisfied that the defense of the status quo (based on perspective) was right.

@deostroll primary key has nothing to do with foreign key

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll I'm not satisfied 100% either. But I don't like your suggestion much either.

Paul White

@EvanCarroll I haven't read back through all the conversation while I was eating, but the two main responses seem to have been well received by both communities.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

I would like if questions could be somehow posted on 2 or 3 sites. And people from both sites could vote and answer.

Probably difficult to implement something like this with the current setup of SE sites.

Evan Carroll

9:12 AM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ that wouldn't solve the problem of segmentation with unique communities of experts and subject matter.

Paul White

@ypercubeᵀᴹ That was a suggestion to change SO's scope wasn't it? Anything tagged with a single database product (or something) should be off-topic?

Evan Carroll

Or, if it would, you need to describe more about what you're thinking of.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite Yes. something like that.

Evan Carroll

@PaulWhite that was my suggestion to change the scope of SO to do just that.

Paul White

1 hour ago, by Evan Carroll

So in practice, what I would say is that if a question is tagged with postgresql and nothing else (or god forbid, even sql-server) that the question be deemed off limits for Stack Overflow, and suitable for this site.

Philᵀᴹ

9:13 AM

It's all well and good railing against the "status quo", but the "status quo" has come about by consensus, via a load of professionals that are passionate about databases, that didn't know each other, with no agenda. Don't you think that the way the site has evolved has done so for a reason?

Paul White

Evan's just fine tuning his pitch for his inevitable ascension.

Philᵀᴹ

Quite pleased I'm going to hell, then!

Paul White

@Philᵀᴹ Ha not quite in that sense as I understand it. But who knows.

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Like Build and strengthen the Stack Exchange community with “crossover questions” between sites?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite yes!

@EvanCarroll FOr the record, I went and tested his second (supposedly corrected) code. It produces 1 row for Jan, 2 rows for March and 1 for April.

Evan Carroll

@Philᵀᴹ no, I think it emerged from beta as something that said "database administrators" a bunch of people using Area51 thought it was cool. Jumped on it. And, now it's become confusing to those on SO, and the lack of definition is still a problem (in my eyes and others). You argue that the definition passed consensus, that's not really so in any meaningful fashion. And, even if it, so what? That was years ago, I could still question it. But it didn't. ;)

I mean look at the definition on the proposal: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4260/database-administrators?phase=definition&tab=active&questions=closed#tab-top

Which one of those questions were closed because they were a typo?

Or because they were too crappy, but would otherwise be welcome on Stack Overflow.

Tom V

9:19 AM

@EvanCarroll dba.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

Basic SQL - ask on Stack Overflow

how is that not clear?

Paul White

There's plenty of history on meta (here and se) about the scope and name.

Evan Carroll

When you answered this, was it basic sql: dba.stackexchange.com/a/141598/2639

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll Answered and closed as off topic though.

Evan Carroll

basic sql: order by in view question dba.stackexchange.com/questions/21434/…

Tom V

@ypercubeᵀᴹ and voted to close anyway

Paul White

9:22 AM

> Very basic questions do still get asked on DBA, and this is perhaps inevitable. These questions are often answered in place rather than being migrated to SO. My feeling is that this is because people want to be helpful. It is easier to answer someone's basic question quickly, rather than waiting for a migration to take effect. This is an ongoing discussion on our site though.

Evan Carroll

Another great one where you detail the use of max() dba.stackexchange.com/a/122987/2639

What's wrong with sql questions and how do we define basic? Is this really a problem that the sql questions are not-basic enough for us?

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll This is basic but a very common misconception. I wouldn't vote to close this.

Evan Carroll

I also wouldn't vote to close.

Tom V

The first one is the only one that would be considered a typo/basic syntax question in my eyes

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll so how is it relevant to the discussion?

Tom V

9:24 AM

And I hope you can see the difference in answering style

between here and SO

Evan Carroll

That's my argument in a nut shell. We're missing a lot of good questions, and they wouldn't otherwise be problematic to be asked here. It is however problematic to have good and concrete questions asked on SO because it confuses the users as to what dba.se is serving and doing (if they even know it exists).

Philᵀᴹ

Why are you all even trying to justify yourselves? Boggle

2

Tom V

not just fixing the OP's problem, but explaining how and why for future reference

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll We don't miss questions because we think they are basic. We miss questions - if we miss them - because people ask them elsewhere.

Paul White

And while there continues to be overlap with SO, that will continue, and I have no issue with it. Plenty of questions to go around.

@Philᵀᴹ Quiet Thursday late evening, bugger all on TV :)

Evan Carroll

9:29 AM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ missing questions because people ask them elsewhere could be better defined by helping people understand where to ask them, that's tough when we're still going with the perspective of the questioner. But, if we tell them where to ask them based on subject matter -- problem solved.

Paul White

Also relevant (one of many): Scope, migration and respect for other users

@EvanCarroll But that's not what we've agreed as the differentiator.

Tom V

@Philᵀᴹ trolling a troll while waiting for an updatestats to finish

Paul White

Bill will pop in with a conversation-ending work of Photoshop genius any moment no doubt.

2

And to address something from earlier, dba.se continues to grow quite nicely, with one of the better communities around. Most metrics show us in or around the top 10 of se sites.

Philᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic

Paul White

Not bad for a bunch of elitist post-modernists :)

@Philᵀᴹ Yeah #13 is about as low as we go. It depends a bit on the time of year. 25k users and moderators get to see more comprensive stats.

Evan Carroll

9:35 AM

Questions/Day #22

deostroll

In rdbms engines are cyclic references disallowed...I mean is there some mechanism to detect them?

Paul White

@EvanCarroll Not a primary metric for mine.

Evan Carroll

what is your primary metric?

Paul White

@deostroll For foreign key relationships? Cascading ones? Something else?

@EvanCarroll Chat comments by Evan per day.

deostroll

for foreign key relationships?

Evan Carroll

9:37 AM

Consider yourself lucky, very lucky, then.

Paul White

Indeed we are on a sharply upward trend!

Philᵀᴹ

Worrying

Evan Carroll

On a different note, who here supports the police?

Paul White

All part of the master plan to get The Heap to 500k messages.

Evan Carroll

If you like our boys in blue, consider taking our #MustardChallenge facebook.com/events/1844026435832065

They need your support.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

9:38 AM

@deostroll explain what you mean with "cyclic references". Foreign Key Constraints that form a directed cycle?

deostroll

@ypercubeᵀᴹ yes

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@deostroll No, they are not disallowed.

Paul White

SQL Server prevents cycles of cascading foreign key actions, but it's not a proper database.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

That's how adjacency lists are implemented. A table that references itself.

Tom V

@PaulWhite haha

Paul White

9:40 AM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ You have an answer populating such a table with a fancy row constructor don't you?

Tom V

@PaulWhite That's why proper applications maintain their own referential integrity

Evan Carroll

@PaulWhite That's a valid point.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

You do have the chicken-and-egg problem though (which table do I insert first?) so they are usually avoided in most DBMS.

Paul White

@TomV Indeed. With custom tool support.

So sad I can't star my own message :(

Evan Carroll

You know I can see another option for DBA.StackExchange. If we're going to continue to be elitists and ban "Simple SQL" questions, can we also ban simple sql backends like MS SQL sql-server?

Tom V

9:42 AM

@EvanCarroll You know, I see a third option, since you think everything about the network is bad

You could start your own site out of frustration with this one, just like this one started out of frustration with expertsexchange

Paul White

@EvanCarroll They're not banned. They're technically off-topic.

Tom V

should be a win-win

dezso

guys, start talking about something interesting

Paul White

@dezso You go first. I'm dull.

Tom V

you get your perfect site, and we accomplish trolls--

ypercubeᵀᴹ

9:43 AM

@deostroll related: dba.stackexchange.com/questions/34151/… and this: stackoverflow.com/questions/10446641/…

Evan Carroll

@dezso we're talking about supporting our boys in blue with the #MustardChallenge facebook.com/events/1844026435832065

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@deostroll and this (if you use Postgres): stackoverflow.com/questions/8394177/…

Paul White

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Deferrable constraints are handy. I do like some PostgreSQL language features.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite yeah, they are quite useful. Were you referring to this answer? dba.stackexchange.com/questions/152427/… (where we avoid deferrable constraints by inserting in a single statement)

Mark Sinkinson

@TomV expert sex change?

Paul White

9:46 AM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Not exactly that one (I hadn't upvoted it) but same idea.

@MarkSinkinson Better than the amateur option.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@deostroll and this (using deferrable constraints in Postgres): dba.stackexchange.com/questions/127107/…

Andriy M

@MarkSinkinson The arch-enemy, for some reason.

Paul White

@EvanCarroll You might get more interest in that when more US-located people are in chat. All the current ones (I think) are outside the US.

I hear questions/day was a primary success metric at Yahoo answers.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Yep. And rather not interested in mustard or boys n blues ;)

Evan Carroll

You gotta respect your president and the police and the Bible and the flag.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

9:50 AM

@EvanCarroll Not my president or police or flag or bible.

Evan Carroll

So show your support and take the #MustardChallenge. Drinking mustard is not too much of a sacrifice for those that would sacrifice everything for you.

Paul White

@Philᵀᴹ Are you interested in answering this? I've been a little disappointed by the Oracle answers thus far.

Evan Carroll

@ypercubeᵀᴹ you have to respect all presidents and polices and flags and Bibles.

Well at least the Christians ones that aren't in major disagreement with each other.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@EvanCarroll Nope.

Paul White

Well we don't have a president. And our flag is my second favourite option. Not getting into religion.

Tom V

9:52 AM

I think it's about time to kick-mute so we can continue the usual chat

Paul White

Our police force is pretty awesome though.

Tom V

and explaining jokes AGL again

Paul White

@TomV Ignore is a better first option.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@TomV you can ignore a user you know ;)

Paul White

echo on

2

Tom V

9:53 AM

TIL

Paul White

Actually I'm happy for anyone to answer that Oracle question that has 150 rep burning a hole in my dba pocket.

Mathematics

Morning

Paul White

Good evening Mr Math

Mathematics

yeah evenings are better, far away from office ;)

Philᵀᴹ

The Heap is my Police Force

@PaulWhite I'll have a look at lunch. Writing some boring reports at the mo

Paul White

9:58 AM

So proud of The Heap regulars today. Pretty awesome performance.

@Philᵀᴹ Cheers. No pressure, just thought you might have missed it and find it fun.

Evan Carroll

I'm going to guess on that Oracle question.

Because I never used oracle and this can't be difficult.

Paul White

@EvanCarroll There's rextester.com/l/oracle_online_compiler to test your ideas.

Evan Carroll

yea, I saw that in a question. testing now.

dezso

@PaulWhite @Philᵀᴹ is interesting, yes

Paul White

@dezso Thanks. Typos are the theme recently.

Andriy M

10:14 AM

The idea behind the latest answer seems to be same as mine. The other contender appears to assume that character data will only consist of single letters. Could suit the OP, the question isn't explicit on that point.

Paul White

@AndriyM Which Q & A are you referring to?

dezso

@PaulWhite you can expect me jumping on these. Cheap jokes are wonderful for derailing a conversation.

Paul White

@dezso There was a joke? You should explain.

Andriy M

3

Q: Re-order columns values based on values in a table

I would like know, how can we re-order the columns in ascending or descending order, while retrieving the data. Suppose the table contains the data as below with no primary key/unique key constraints: Col1 Col2 Col3 Col4 ---- ---- ---- ---- B D C A C ...

sql oracle pivot sorting

dezso

@AndriyM too much noise here, don't hear you well

Paul White

10:17 AM

@AndriyM You don't have an answer there?

> The idea behind the latest answer seems to be same as mine.

Andriy M

@PaulWhite I had only an idea, not an answer :)

Paul White

@AndriyM Oh I see :)

Andriy M

Ambiguously phrased, sorry, didn't mean that.

Paul White

At this point any answer that works, with a non-insane code layout, and some teaching/explanation value would be welcome.

Perhaps I should have migrated it to SO.

2

hot2use

11:02 AM

Hi to you all. Nice being here. Question about a question. Currently I have opened up a question over on Serverfault.com because I thought I would get a good response regarding IP configuration and networking. So far, nothing.

0

Q: SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) IP Handling on Multi-Instance Servers

Tl;Dr I have a SQL Server instance (SQLSERVER01-i01) with a dedicated IP address and port (162.xxx.xxx.51:1433) on a multi-instance SQL Server (each SQL Server instance on the Windows Server has its own IP address) which are all hosted on one Windows server (SQLSERVER01 / 162.xxx.xxx.50). I a...

sql-server firewall windows-server-2012-r2 ip ssrs

Bases on your vast knowledge and understanding of everything surrounding SQL Server, would I get a better response from the dba.stackexchange.com community?

Paul White

@hot2use That's a very well-asked question. I'm not qualified to say if it would be answered here. One of the others should have an opinion on that, perhaps @TomV?

That said, it's only had 12 views on SF so a bounty is something else to consider in general. We don't have a particularly good record with SSRS questions here.

Philᵀᴹ

Has someone got a bad reputation around serverfault? meta.serverfault.com/questions/6668/…

Paul White

Nov 23 at 23:43, by Evan Carroll

I'll have you know, I've got more SE t-shirts than I can shake a stick at.

(you used to get a t-shirt just for running in a moderator election)

Philᵀᴹ

-30

A: Fluent in Spanish? We're hiring a Community Manager for a Spanish Stack Overflow

I'd like to submit my application for this job. Requirements Fluency in English and Spanish (native-level writing in Spanish) I'm not quite fluent in Spanish but I'm willing to learn. I think this should only be a minor setback. Rosetta Stone is discounted to $249 now so the company expens...

LOLs

Paul White

Yep there are some classics around the metas.

Searching can easily lead to a loss of productivity similar to TV tropes.

dezso

11:11 AM

> I've now been unbanned for at least a year.

Philᵀᴹ

Looking around the other SE verticals, it must just be our turn to be trolled for a while until he gets bored. Looks like it's the same shyte over and over again

ypercubeᵀᴹ

4

Q: The INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE permission was denied on the object 'TheTable', database 'TheDb', schema 'dbo'

I have two Sql-Server user accounts on a database that behave differently on INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE. UserA can do these commands (on any table). It is a Sql-Server 'local' account. DOMAIN\UserB, cannot. It comes from a Windows AD account. It is a member of Administrators group on the database ser...

sql-server sql-server-2008-r2 permissions

... schema 'TheSchema' would make the question so much better

Philᵀᴹ

11:35 AM

-11

Q: Tag [fstab] and migration to Unix.SE

There are certainly valid uses of [fstab] on AU.SE. However, 95% of them are probably not valid in being Ubuntu specific. Why not migrate those questions to Unix.SE? Here is an example of a valid question with this tag CIFS shares do not mount after upgrade to 12.10 from 12.04 Mount network NT...

discussion migration

The comments on that are the same crap we've had this morning

hot2use

@PaulWhite Thanks for the feedback. I'll give the bounty a thought or two. But I'd rather post the question on dba.se and offer a bounty there. (after closing on SF)

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@Philᵀᴹ but the suggestion was on opposite direction (there: specific, Ubuntu -> generic, Unix) vs (here: generic, programming, SO -> specific, SQL, Dba.se)

Paul White

@hot2use Yep no worries. Let me know if you decide to delete and re-ask because I could probably add a more attractive bounty. We can talk more about that if and when.

Mark Sinkinson

11:58 AM

@Philᵀᴹ Just block him and carry on... :-)

3

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