The Heap™ – Consultancy ©® - 2012-02-10 (page 1 of 2)

1:27 AM

Is it reasonable to say "I want data exactly like my sample answer so I'm not going to upvote you?" e.g.

1

Q: Easily show rows that are different between two tables or queries

Imagine you have two different tables/queries that are supposed to have/return identical data. You want to verify this. What's an easy way to show any unmatched rows from each table, based on every column being exactly the same? Assume there are 30 columns in the tables, many of which are NULLabl...

Also is it okay to edit someone else's answer to expand it slightly, or should I post a seperate answer?

ErikE

2:27 AM

I think it's quite reasonable, @SimonRigharts (of course I'm the one that did it). But are we really criticizing now for "explained nonvotes" as opposed to everyone's past pet peeve of "unexplained downvotes"?

If people are just going to toss off replies that don't really answer the full question, they deserve fewer points. Post your own answer if you can do better! Don't help reward someone else's laziness!

I updated my question to be more explicit about needing a result exactly like the example. Thanks for the tip that folks needed some handholding. Done!

Simon Righarts

4:12 AM

@ErikE I think you're being a bit unreasonable, the answer posted had the solution to your primary problem (needing to join on every column). Saying "folks needed some handholding" is a bit rich when you're essentially asking to be handheld to your exact solution.

ErikE

5:08 AM

@SimonRigharts Take a look at Jeff Atwood's blog post on asking your own questions and this Microsoft Connect item (notice the name of the submitter). I'm giving away easy rep here. If no one answered, I was going to answer it myself. But no one has answered to my satisfaction. So yeah, "handholding!"

Actually, I'm not mad. I'm not even feeling snippy. I wasn't even really serious about handholding in the sense of knowing the answer, just in having the quality of answer documented that I came here to get done. I thought your response to my very friendly and lighthearted "hint hint hint" in the comments to be a bit misplaced.

Quoting Jeff:

> So …
>
> - if you have a question that you already know the answer to
> - if you’d like to document it in public so others (including yourself) can find it later
> - it is OK to ask, and answer, your own question on a relevant Stack Exchange site.
>
> To be crystal clear, it is not merely OK to ask and answer your own question, it is explicitly encouraged.

Is it wrong of me to want it be a truly thorough answer, and to be willing to guide others to earning the rep I want to give away, when I could have just answered it myself? You can't judge my "dba" ability by how much rep I have.

Simon Righarts

5:40 AM

Phone ate my last reply, looks like

Anyway, bearing in mind I had no idea about that Connect item (good idea, by the way), I read your comments as "I want the answer without having to do any work for it". My apologies for that, since that's obviously not the case.

@ErikE, that said, why bring rep into it at all? I never mentioned it and it' not an issue for me. Hell, with <1k rep myself, I'm in no position to be a rep elitist or whatever.

ErikE

6:14 AM

@SimonRigharts I brought rep up just to answer back your own charge about me needing handholding. I don't mean to be a pill. I wasn't trying to trick anyone. I just wanted a good answer to a good question that could really help people (it has saved me so much time and really helped me prove that a modified query gives the same results).

Mark Storey-Smith

9:44 AM

@ErikE I've put a comment on your Q. If you want thorough answers, ask a thorough question i.e. provide DDL and sample data INSERT scripts

Simon Righarts

10:07 AM

Morning gents

Mark Storey-Smith

Morning

Simon Righarts

10:34 AM

Quiet morning, everyone trying to get their work done by lunchtime to take Friday afternoon off?

Mark Storey-Smith

@SimonRigharts New iSCSI SAN to test (play) with

Simon Righarts

Ooh. Shiny.

Althought I guess "Glowy" might be a better term with the number of lights typically on those things

Rohit

11:43 AM

hi

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

1:55 PM

@MarkStoreySmith Can I benchmark an ETL process on it, pretty please?

With a cherry on top?

Mark Storey-Smith

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Locked up in the clients lab room unfortunately

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@MarkStoreySmith Pity.

What spec is it?

Mark Storey-Smith

Its an eval IBM unit, 24 disk I think. 2 tics

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

Any chance of punting a DW benchmarking exercise to its owners?

Mark Storey-Smith

If you could get the necessary software on VM, I might be able to run it up at some point

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

2:08 PM

Maybe I could. Do you have the option of frigging the disk layout?

Mark Storey-Smith

Prior to it going into production yes

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

What hypervisor are you using?

Mark Storey-Smith

www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ds3500

This is intended for a new HyperV environment, to support TFS/VS Lab Management

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@MarkStoreySmith And you've got a server using HyperV to go with it?

Mark Storey-Smith

How very IBM... there is an option in the storage manager software to "Enable high performance tier controllers", which requires further $$ I suspect

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Yup, single hyper-v host for test purposes currently.

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

2:13 PM

Dell and HP make things like this. They're sort of a cross between entry-level SAN and direct attach storage with an external RAID controller. You can get SAS versions of them.

HP and Dell publish white papers on Microsoft's fast track data warehouse site using similar arrays, but with SAS interfaces. They claim pretty good (1600MB/sec) throughput from them.

Are your iSCSI ports 1Gbit or 10Gbit?

Mark Storey-Smith

We're stuck with 1Gb network in the lab currently. Hyperv host has quad port bonded, waiting on the config for device to be checked as I'm only getting .5Gb to it currently

device has 10Gb ports, waiting on switch to be ordered

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@MarkStoreySmith Could be the stripe size on your array. A 64k stripe would max out at 240MB/sec unless it had an agressive read-ahead policy.

360MB/sec if it had 15k drives.

Do you have a PDF of the configuration or admin guide for it?

Mark Storey-Smith

2:32 PM

I've literally just got my hands on it today

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

I think this type of system might be quite fast potentially, especially with SAS connectors.

Any idea how much it costs?

Mark Storey-Smith

I'll enquire when I cross the building next

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

That would be good. I imagine the equivalent systems from Dell and HP will cost about the same. Pretty much all larger DW-on-SAN configurations (at least the credible ones) go with multiple mid-range SAN controllers like Clariions or something like that, rather than a big monolithic system.

I think these systems are a bit pricier than straight direct attach systems, but the SAS ones are quite a bit cheaper than Fibre channel variants. The case studies all configured them with SAS controllers.

Given that you've got MS and vendors punting this type of configuration in white papers, if they actually perform it might be an easier sell.

Mark Storey-Smith

This does support fc apparently. not sure if its default config or an option. Quick eyeball of the back of the kit earlier suggests a modular approach to the ports i.e. they might be chop and changeable

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

Yes, you can get different controllers with different interface ports. Acording to the blurb they have SAS, F/C, 1Gb iSCSI and 10Gb iSCSI. Maybe they do FCoE as well.

The SAS ones are a bit cheaper, apparently. A bit of google-fu found someone punting a bare SAS one for about £10k.

Although I saw others from about £2,900, so it's a bit hard to say. I'd believe £10k for a SAS one with on-board RAID, though.

If the on-board RAID actually peforms it might be a reasonable bit of kit.

The cheaper ones may just be JBOD expansion units with no local controllers.

Need to get the actual part numbers for the specific confits.

This is the equivalent system from HP

jcolebrand

2:49 PM

Oy, yay meetings.

Mark Storey-Smith

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Do you want eyeballs on the SQLIO tests when done? I'm running the standard battery over a 16 drive R5 at 64 and 128 stripes.

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

Wouldn't hurt.

I think a HP P2000 with SAS controllers and 24x146GB drives seems to be about £16K.

A bit dearer than equivalent spec DAS, but not outlandishly so. As I said, if they perform half-decently they might be a goer.

Can you do a streaming I/O test? - are the drives 10k or 15k?

480MB/sec would be about right for an array of 16x15k disks with a 128KB stripe.

Actually about 512MB/sec. You'd get 128KBx250 = 32MB/sec per drive.

gbn

4:02 PM

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells: LinkedIn invite sent.

'afternoon all.

DTest

howdy @gbn

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@gbn Can't see it through the firewall. I'll take a look when I get home.

@MarkStoreySmith - any chance of giving me the data dump before tomorrow?

Does @JackDouglas have a linkedin account?

gbn

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells yes

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

Maybe I'll stalk him and see if I can find it.

Ben Brocka

I should put my linkedin in my profile...maybe then I'll have a reason to use it

gbn

4:14 PM

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells he's a connection of mine

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

OK.

I haven't used it fo rmuch - I set it up a few years ago and then never did anything with it. I've really only just started setting up connections on it quite recently.

gbn

@BenBrocka I'm a fan of it. I got a job offer through it a few weeks (but took another). And folk do look you up

Ben Brocka

Honestly twitter has been a better job finding tool for me than linkedin, but I think they actually found me via UX.SE

gbn

I've also used it to check up on "who knows this candidate" when I was a hiring bod

@BenBrocka My SO+DBA profile has also opened doors for me in Malta

Ben Brocka

I just wish SO.Careers was a bit more general. not set up well for UX, though my sorta-relevant programming experience fits in there well

jcolebrand

4:17 PM

So, looking up JD took about 4 minutes. So if I can connect to him, you lot should be able to easily

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

I gess there's nothing too unprintable in my SO stuff. I could start slinging it around as a reference.

jcolebrand

@BenBrocka Then you should post a Meta Stack Overflow Q about it

gbn

@BenBrocka it's pants for non-US, or non-London

Tim Stone

@jcolebrand It's already been addressed, sort of.

Ben Brocka

I'm US so that's not a problem. It didn't seem country specific though, do you just mean not many employers outside there look on SO careers?

Most of our traffic is US but there's lots of international as well

jcolebrand

4:20 PM

@TimStone but it's NOT :p

Tim Stone

Yeah, but the answer was "One day...!" :P

jcolebrand

@TimStone that is distinctly not six-to-eight weeks

Tim Stone

2

A: Is Careers for system administrators, too?

The primary focus of the Careers services at this point is on programmers and programming jobs. The job listings are "syndicated" both on Stack Overflow and Server Fault because of the overlap in the audience and also because it's not uncommon for system administration jobs to be posted by employ...

Solution: Get really big and attract a wide-audience for your topic-specific site, then wait six to eight weeks.

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

My sum total of achievements for this week: one dimension and one fact table mapping. Most of this week spent waiting for permissions to get set up so I can deploy to my development environment.

I'm also beginning to recover my deeply repressed memories of OWB development.

The clowns! The clowns!

Ben Brocka

One dimension? I've had 3 for years!

gbn

4:24 PM

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells Friday. Get wankered, Fuggetaboutit.

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@gbn Pretty much. I can make a cube on monday.

I guess I've brought at least a modicum of intelligence to the business this week.

Ben Brocka

@ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells a rotating cube, I hope

71

Q: Is this rotating cube interface user-friendly?

I'm working on a prototype for an innovative form interface, where different parts of the form are shown on different sides of a cube. The cube rotates, and the user can fill it out as the cube spins. Here is a working example. To me, it seems like a pretty robust solution to our problem (i.e., ...

forms interaction-design

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@BenBrocka I think 3D user interfaces were invented by people who had the same level of insight as the people who invented light pens.

Well, 3 spatial dimensions anyway - 2D + stacking order is still a 3D user interface.

Unfortunatly I think most of my intelligence is dribbling out of my ear these days.

Ben Brocka

Light pens were brilliant!

Sketchpad

Sketchpad (aka Robot Draftsman) was a revolutionary computer program written by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 in the course of his PhD thesis, for which he received the Turing Award in 1988. It helped change the way people interact with computers. Sketchpad is considered to be the ancestor of modern computer-aided drafting (CAD) programs as well as a major breakthrough in the development of computer graphics in general. For example, the Graphic User Interface was derived from the Sketchpad as well as modern object oriented programming. Ivan Sutherland demonstrated with it that computer graphics...

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

@BenBrocka Beware the gorilla arm

Ben Brocka

4:28 PM

you just mean pen input in general? The actual first light pens were a massive breakthrough in graphics and direct manipulation

Of course in the 50s and 60s ergonomics weren't the first thing to come to mind when discussing computers

Besides, you had to have a working light pen to discover gorilla arm, it was a completely new interaction

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

There's quite a good cartoon about the hologram user interface on Minority report with a caption that went something like 'Lady you've got all the qualifications but I'm afraid you just haven't got the upper body strength to do the job'.

Using light pens for 8 hrs a day was actually quite hard work.

Ben Brocka

Which is why modern pen inputs generally let you rest your arm, like Wacom tablets or tablet PCs that fold flat

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

Easier to do with flat screens.

Ben Brocka

True, CRTs are silly

ConcernedOfTunbridgeWells

They haven't been a mass-market technology all that long, though. Outside of laptops they've really only been a mainstream technology from the mid 2000s.

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