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5:28 AM
2
A: What are some good Auto vacuuming starting points Postgres? for high write,high update,and mostly read table types?

Laurenz AlbeThat question is too broad, but here are some pointers about configuring autovacuum: For tables that receive bulk inserts, run an explicit VACUUM afterwards or use PostgreSQL v13. For tables with many updates, a fillfactor of 70 to 90 (depending on row size) is a good thing if no updated column...

It always puzzles me when people start their answer with a reason the question isn't suitable for the site.
It might well be a broad question, but the answer seems useful.
What's the desired end state here? A broad question with one useful answer, but no further answers allowed?
Deletion?
@Johnakahot2use and @MaxVernon particularly interested in your thoughts since you voted to close. If elected, those votes would be binding.
 
5:42 AM
The answer doesn't contain an explanation why. So it's just an opinion. Not fact based. The answer even starts with : This question is too broad. (MOO)
It's one of those It depends™
I think I voted to close the question before the answer was given as Not suitable for this site in part because RDS was mentioned.
OP is asking for AUTOVACUUM settings and the answer as I understand it is for VACCUM (manual).
 
6:06 AM
@Johnakahot2use Amazon Relational Database Service is off-topic?
Anyway, I think it is interesting to discuss where the line is between answering based on expert practical experience, and anybody's two cents of opinion.
> Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than on facts, references, or specific expertise.
@Johnakahot2use "Too localized" if I'm reading the history right.
I'm not saying anyone is wrong here, just chatting about it
 
I retraced my vtc and added my two cents.
That's why I think it was an It depends™
But thanks for bringing up the topic.
1
A: Auto vacuuming high-write, high-update, and mostly read table types

John aka hot2useThere is a document on the internet that discusses AUTOVACUUM in PostgreSQL on RDS titled: Understanding autovacuum in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL environments In particular .... Autovacuum is a daemon that automates the execution of VACUUM and ANALYZE (to gather statistics) commands. Autovacuum c...

Edge case
 
@Johnakahot2use Interesting. I didn't know you were a Postgres user?
adjusts election vote
 
I work with PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle RDBMS and SQL Server.
:-P
 
6:21 AM
Sorry to hear about MySQL
 
Yeah, I know.
I'd say I'm a pretty good generalist with a professional focus on SQL Server and Oracle, followed by PostgreSQL and then MySQL.
I used to do Gupta and DB2.
 
Nice
 
@Johnakahot2use Glad to see you at least don't have to deal with Caché
 
@TomV We do have it, but we don't have to DBA it. The supplier does.
Same for PervasiveSQL.
I like this guy
 
Good morning all - Dia dhaoibh go léir!
Seeing as we're going through database servers - is anybody runnning Firebird or Interbase?
 
6:35 AM
Nope, but I run SQLite at home meh
Oh and morning.
:-)
 
6:49 AM
@Johnakahot2use I think everybody has a sqlite somewhere but do you actually "admin" it?
 
7:02 AM
@TomV PiHole 5.0 runs with SQLite. Had to clean up some wrongly inserted blacklist items.
@PaulWhite You're good.
 
@PaulWhite Lately I've seen single close votes of: "This question does not appear to belong here. Either it's not database-related or it otherwise conflicts with the scope of our site.", on questions that really belongs here. (Ex. SQL queries). Even some comments saying: "This question is not about DB administration."
 
@Johnakahot2use Can you tell I'm working the review queues 😀
 
@PaulWhite sort of
😎
 
@McNets Please mod-flag if you see really daft ones. We can help educate people where necessary.
 
@PaulWhite Ok
 
 
1 hour later…
8:34 AM
4 messages moved to Trash
 
 
3 hours later…
11:38 AM
> Election closes in 4 days.
9,160 voters were eligible, 1,531 visited the site during the election, 1,176 visited the election page, and 578 voted
For 2015:
> 2,548 voters were eligible, 985 visited the site during the election, 687 visited the election page, and 419 voted
@ypercubeᵀᴹ
 
11:56 AM
300% more voters; 80% more visits to the election page; only 30% more votes;
 
12:10 PM
0
Q: What contributes most: a long answer with more than one way of doing a task or a short answer with the method known to be more professional?

RonaldoI answered this question using a method that looked ok and solved the user's problem. But later a more experienced user added a comment showing a method that is the solution "by design" and looks more professional. With his authorization I improved my answer with that method and removed mine (see...

 
@PaulWhite I'm interested why you don't think we should have a separate tag for partition pruning.
 
@Colin'tHart Not necessarily opposed, but new tags should come with usage guidance and ideally a description. Partition elimination might be another term for it. Is it too specialized to be useful. Good new tags also tend to be applied to more than one question.
 
@PaulWhite Under a strict interpretation of "the rules" around closure that question is both "too broad" and "opinion based" since it asks about 4 different patterns of data modifications, and specifically, in the opening sentence, "what are good auto-vacuum settings". "Good" means opinion-based to me.
Having said that, perhaps the "too broad" bit is just wording, and there could be leeway given for the "opinion based" part. At this point, I will probably retract the close vote, especially since there are two helpful answers to the question that future visitors could probably benefit from. I'm bookmarking posts now that are marginal so I can follow up with them in a couple of days.
Part of the reason I tend to cast close votes fairly frequently is because I personally hate wasting my time when looking for a resolution to a problem and I come upon a question that has been around for a long time, with no answer. It's just frustrating, and unhelpful, and I want the user experience for our site to be one of "that solved my exact problem."
Frequently, I use the "close" vote as a way of attempting to prod the OP into refining or clarifying their question until it more closely aligns with that ideal. This goes back to the "on-hold" versus "closed" debate that happened a while back, where "on-hold" was seen as more friendly and should help the OP ask a more appropriately defined question.
 
@Johnakahot2use 260% more voters; 55% more visitors; closer to 40% more votes.
 
and still four days to go
 
12:24 PM
@PaulWhite where did you get the stats around visits to the election page for this election? I can see it for past elections, but not the current one.
 
@MaxVernon It's on the current election page dba.stackexchange.com/election
 
where? I don't see it anywhere.
 
Maybe it is only visible to mods?
 
@MaxVernon Just below the "election closes in 4 days" text?
 
12:28 PM
That's weird. Perhaps it's mod-only? Can't think why, and there's no indication of it.
 
I even looked at the view-source and it's certainly not in there
 
@MaxVernon That shows how you voted. Would be like me to dispose of it?
 
I noticed that
I suppose it wouldn't hurt. Although it's not likely that my vote would have been unexpected.
I don't imagine Trump will vote for Biden, lol, as much as we might hope for that outcome.
 
We?
 
the royal we
 
12:32 PM
 
it must be hidden for non-mods
 
Do you see voting stats for previous elections?
 
@jcolebrand - you can see those deets?
@PaulWhite yes
 
Weird.
 
@PaulWhite all this time I've been looking at the Constituent badge stats, meanwhile you can see the exact number lol.
 
12:38 PM
@MaxVernon Give it five or six days and the issue might be fixed (for you)
 
yesterday, by Max Vernon
@TomV there are 60 people listed per page on my browser for the Constituent badge(those who vote get that badge automatically). When I last checked there were 8 pages (+around 25 users on page 9) that were from yesterday or today.
@AndriyM lol (or not)
 
Strange I got the same picture as Max did ;-)
 
@MaxVernon I tend to view "too broad" as multiple questions that ought to be separate questions. The problems with broad questions are identifying a correct answer, and a multitude of partial answers. It's hard to see how four questions about auto vacuum settings would be better than one general question with four examples. On the "opinion-based" aspect, I am not triggered by the word "good". As I responded earlier, the question for me is whether all "opinions" would be equally valid...
...versus an informed expert "opinion" based on real-world experience and/or deep technical knowledge. One might, for example, ask a lawyer for a professional opinion.
 
Maybe I missed it, but who'd the mod who'd retiring?
 
@Vérace That hasn't been announced
 
12:40 PM
whisking off to remove unqualified, non-deep technical knowledge answer
 
@PaulWhite - isn't it nearly 02:00 in Kiwi land?
 
@Vérace 01:40 yes.
 
"How to backup data?" is one question but it's still overly broad.
2
 
@PaulWhite yah, opinions aren't all bad I suppose. Sometimes they're the only things that are actually relevant.
 
@AndriyM Thanks. You have way too much spare time ;-)
Although I must confess that I haven't been overly productive today.
 
12:41 PM
@Johnakahot2use And OCD :)
 
Is it like the Third Secret of Fatima - to be revealed by a future Pope in 2100 (I won't be around! <sob...>)?
 
@PaulWhite I've retracted and upvoted the question. Thanks for the discussion, btw.
 
@MaxVernon It really goes to the heart of the question for mine. Do we close questions because we follow the text of the close reasons like a law? Or does closing exist to get rid of questions that don't add value to the site (or cause problems), and close reasons are just hopefully-helpful guidance primarily for the asker, as to why a question might not be suitable, in general terms.
 
@Vérace until it's formally announced, it wouldn't be fair to potentially undermine confidence.
 
@Vérace No, but I think it's only fair that the person leaving should be able to make the announcement (if any) on their own terms, and at the time they choose.
 
12:47 PM
@MaxVernon @PaulWhite - makes sense - fair point! Both of them!
 
@AndriyM Indeed. Context is also important. So many well-asked design questions quickly get close votes for being too broad, which they kinda inevitably are by their nature. I would argue they're not too broad in most cases. See for example the great answers MDCCL used to write.
 
@PaulWhite it's interesting - not having those close reasons, and just having a place where you're compelled to type in the reason might make closers more likely to give it the thought its due.
 
I should also say that moderators can step down at any time, for any or no reason, and can come back at any time. It's a volunteer thing after all.
@MaxVernon It is interesting. On balance, I think the close reasons are helpful (reviewers are also volunteers and their time is valuable) but a balance must be struck between choosing a reason to be helpful, and kinda blindly applying reasons as if they were laws.
 
@PaulWhite those answers are some of the most stellar answers I've seen.
 
It's funny how quickly design questions (the good ones I mean) get close votes (too broad/opinion-based) as if database design were somehow simply a matter of opinion and not based on genuine expertise.
 
12:52 PM
Should this be an answer (expanded)?
 
If I were a design expert (which I'm not) I might be a miffed by that.
 
@PaulWhite it's perhaps quite likely that when presented with the option to close a question, the reviewer might try to fit a question into one of those categories. I'm not saying I've ever done that, no not me, never. Hi, my name is Max, and I'm a serial reviewer.
 
@MaxVernon People do that all the time, understandably.
There's another tension here, between being over-eager to cast the first close vote, and not closing poor questions early enough.
I suppose no one said Q & A would be easy.
 
ain't that the truth
 
8
Q: Is the comment-only answer acceptable?

Peter VandivierToday I ran across this question, which I think is a pretty good example of a situation where a full answer may not be warranted. It was a bit messy in the original edit, but there was a correct (if incredibly trivial) answer available to respond with. So... Is the comment-only answer ever const...

I really ought to FAQ-ify that.
 
12:55 PM
@PaulWhite agreed
 
Much as I hate to give Peter credit for anything.
 
lol
@Vérace if there was a better question and answer pair that explains NOT IN, I'd be inclined to close (!) that as a dupe and move on. If there isn't any other good question-and-answer pair that explains NOT IN, then it would be much better to provide an answer with a good example based on their question.
 
@PaulWhite Early voting is all the rage these days
 
@TomV heh true
 
@PaulWhite I tend to think the latter
 
1:01 PM
Well me too, but I've been wrong before.

2016 I think it was.
🤣
 
Morning presumably?
 
@MaxVernon That's fine, but tags in titles aside please respect the original author's preferences as far as possible instead of rolling back. We also strongly prefer not to impose our own code-formatting preferences herePaul White ♦ 10 hours ago
It's those leading commas, isn't it.
 
@MaxVernon He had leading commas. You added spaces!
Plus I'm practicing my meta links
 
@PaulWhite lol
you're the meta king
 
Anyway it's all good, I mainly wanted to emphasise my view that edits are always suggested edits and if the author objects, so be it.
 
1:05 PM
@PaulWhite right. I did the rollback because of the comment in their rollback saying not to remove SQL Server from the title. I suppose I could have just edited it to remove that in the title and moved on.
 
What do we do with all those non-answered meta questions anyway?
 
@MaxVernon That would have been ideal
@Johnakahot2use We treasure them
One day we'll build a museum
 
@Johnakahot2use burn 'em. They're a witch.
 
@AndriyM Can I just state for the record I think you would have made a very fine dba moderator.
 
I'm on page 2 nowadays. See the following meta for specifics:
28
Q: Database Administrators Top User Swag

Adam LearAs a thank you for being awesome, if you are on page 1 or page 2 of … https://dba.stackexchange.com/users?tab=reputation&filter=all … we'll be sending you a little care package shortly: Database Administrators t-shirt in your size Database Administrators die-cut, vinyl stickers Stack Exchange...

 
1:07 PM
@PaulWhite I agree with that.
 
I guess it's kinda a weird truism that sometimes the best candidate won't consider themselves worthy
In general I mean
 
hey hey hey what are you saying "best" lol
 
@PaulWhite I agree
:D
 
@PaulWhite I have no objections against your saying that but must also add that I very much doubt I would
 
1:09 PM
@MaxVernon Well no disrespect intended but if Andriy has stood with the current list he would have had my 1st Choice vote.
 
@PaulWhite I'm just messing around. I know you only have the best intentions.
 
@MaxVernon That's the cover I hide under. In fact, I am quite evil.
 
well you're doing a masterful job
 
@AndriyM Well I only get one vote, and people vote for all sorts of reasons. My main criteria are soundness of judgement, and temperament.
@MaxVernon Thanks I have worked hard at it over a long period of time.
Anyway it's a pretty thankless task and nowhere near as exciting as people think it will be. I pity the fools.
 
@PaulWhite A Team reference, nice.
 
1:14 PM
haha
 
Jack Douglas would have been Hannibal I think
Aaron is obviously Face
That leaves Cole as Murdock heh heh heh
 
@PaulWhite I appreciate the credit of trust regardless hat tip
 
@PaulWhite lol
 
@AndriyM Well you lost all credibility by not self-nominating 😋
 
Oh yes, woe me
 
1:18 PM
While Paul was learning the ropes (Hint: comments)
4
Q: Self-deleting comments

RDFozzWould it be possible to allow a commenter to place an expiration date on a comment? I bring this up following a comment I added to this question. The OP had two consecutive comments (6 minutes apart), with the second saying "Disregard previous comment", and the first basically being some code. ...

 
I really liked that question at the time and still do.
Though my thinking has evolved a bit over time.
I really like the way Top Answers handles comments.
But SO Inc. probably won't copy that for a while yet.
Jeff Atwood resisted comments for a long time, and he was probably right.
Master Database is slow today.
 
And I was about to say it was unusually quick when it reported this question here one minute after it was submitted.
 
I have over 2800 extant comments on this site. I bet a good percentage of those would be gone if there was a "self destruct after 2 days" option.
 
1:44 PM
phew, I'm finally popular:
I was beginning to doubt myself lol
but google thinks I'm popular so it must be true
 
2:02 PM
0
Q: Log all users activity in SQL SERVER as history to trace users' queries

hady askalanyI need to log the below attributes at a new table when any user or application contact and query anything in the SQL server. Remote Machine Name. Remote Machine IP. Server Name OR IP connected. Action Date. Type of Access. The username - used for login. DB Name connected. Queries executed. I tr...

I feel like this must be a duplicate, but I'm unable to find a good one.
Something that says "this is a bad idea" 😁
 
@AndriyM Huh I missed that!
 
: Add close reason of "probably a duplicate idk"
 
2 hours ago, by Master Database
0
Q: What contributes most: a long answer with more than one way of doing a task or a short answer with the method known to be more professional?

RonaldoI answered this question using a method that looked ok and solved the user's problem. But later a more experienced user added a comment showing a method that is the solution "by design" and looks more professional. With his authorization I improved my answer with that method and removed mine (see...

 
@JoshDarnell Shouldn't be required if all the permissions are set correctly.
You can only do what you are allowed to do.
Unless the DB connection is with sa....
 
2:18 PM
@PaulWhite Yes, I started suspecting you might after I looked at the question list and saw nothing new after that Q. There was much discussion following the notification, so missing it is no wonder actually.
 
@Johnakahot2use Everyone look at John, living in some kind of fantasy world where users only have the permissions they need 😉
 
@JoshDarnell It's a little unclear so one of many duplicates would probably do as a starting point e.g. dba.stackexchange.com/q/202357
 
@PaulWhite Good idea! I'll go ahead and close, and add in other targets as appropriate.
 
@JoshDarnell Yeah you should be able to cover most of the usual bases with two or three
5
A: Can SQL Server Audit be used to track hostnames or IP adresses of the users performing DML on a table?

spaghettidbaWith SQLAudit you cannot track HostName or IP address. However, there's an alternative method for auditing, based on streaming extended events. I blogged about it earlier this year. Basically, you treat locks acquired as indicators of the operations being performed on the tables (shared locks ...

 
2:36 PM
Doneski.
 
Sweetski
@JoshDarnell You could have been the Newest moderator you know
 
@PaulWhite I couldn't handle that kind of abuse. You know, my feelings and all.
 
Ah true
 
Plus I can only handle a certain amount of rejection in a short period of time.
2
 
😂
 
2:41 PM
😋
 
The rejection is real, but the abuse is pretty rare on dba
And what little there is doesn't last very long, one way or another
Most of it really is pushing the mop around
 
Computer Janitor
 
Ah the other kiwi arrives
It's an apt metaphor though a little hard on janitors perhaps
 
Discovered it as a pejorative term for DBAs that only deal with backups and restores and such
 
2:57 PM
Well those indexes aren't gong to defrag themselves
sys.database_automatic_tuning_options aside
 
Funny enough, at the client we used the term, the indexes never got defragged because Ola's scripts in default mode would hit "the big table" and they'd kill the job before the users got in the next day so they wouldn't be affected by the job
Ok, so we need to have two instances of it running - one that only does the "big tables" and this one that does everything but.
"Nah, that's too complicated. We'll just keep doing what we're doing"
 
5 messages moved to Trash
 
Mod abuse! Censorship! Tyranny!
 
8/10. Needs more caps
 
Not even a 1 instead of an exclamation
6/10 at best.
 
3:08 PM
Fair criticism. Totally valid. I can handle that.
weeps bitterly
 
mrs john aka hot2use....i sent image about system log event in my edited post — dgr ht7g 7 hours ago
gender can be hard
 
no one make the obvious joke unless you're fully committed to JEAGL
 
That level of commitment could get you chat banned by a high schooler.
 
It would be cruel to provoke high-schoolers, thus distracting them from school-related matters. After all, they should be in school, you know
 
3:23 PM
@JoshDarnell Joe is that you?
 
@PaulWhite Just filling in since he's not around.
 
Love your work
 
3:40 PM
@PaulWhite I thought that question looked familiar when you linked it lol
 
@billinkc Perfect!
 
Quite
 
@TomV Do you remember it specially for some reason?
 
4:00 PM
@PaulWhite I didn't until I saw I edited one of the answers
I mean I remembered it, but didn't know why initially
 
You do the best formattings
 
Which means I must have seen it
May 19 '16 at 17:28, by Tom V
I'm an elephant
 
 
4 hours later…
7:50 PM
@MaxVernon yeah, it looks mod only I guess? I would've expected that to be a 20k I suppose
It's not super useful tbh
 
8:30 PM
0
Q: Determine Nodes in Network with Postgresql

ChristopheI have a table where every entry is a node and the table contains the direct connections of each node to other nodes. I am looking to create a view with a column for each node containing all the nodes in the chain, not just the nodes the node itself is connected to. An example would be generating...

This looks answerable to me now, if there are any postgres recursive CTE gurus hanging around.
 
8:41 PM
@JoshDarnell OP added table schema at least
 
And they have sample data (albeit in a not ideal format), and expected results.
Really it's a very good question compared with many that come in.
 
@JoshDarnell I've set up a fiddle dbfiddle.uk/…
I suppose nodes_in_chain should be empty
 
9:42 PM
@JoshDarnell good question, yes. Not easy but I think doable.
 
10:23 PM
I think I solved it
0
A: Determine Nodes in Network with Postgresql

McNetsI applied this logic: Each connection is included in other connection but itself. SELECT e1.node, e1.connections, COALESCE(e2.connections, e1.connections) FROM example e1 LEFT JOIN example e2 ON e2.node <> e1.node AND e1.connections <@ e2.connections; node | conn...

 
10:47 PM
Nice.
Go team.
 
11:16 PM
@McNets see my comment.
I think what they are after is often described as "transitive closure". I think I've found a similar question.
7
Q: Grouping on any one of multiple columns in Postgres

Stephen SmithIs it possible to create some sort of chain of grouping in Postgres? Let's say I have the following chart: CREATE TABLE foo AS SELECT row_number() OVER () AS id, * FROM ( VALUES ( 'X', 'D', 'G', 'P' ), ( 'F', 'D', 'L', 'M' ), ( 'X', 'N', 'R', 'S' ), ( 'Y', 'I', 'W', NULL ), ( 'U', 'Z',...

Jack's solution there is using arrays and so you can probably adjust it easier to the recent question.
 
I thought you'd post a more accurate (math) answer.
Let me read the answers, Jack and yours. I need to read it carefully
@ypercubeᵀᴹ
 
@PaulWhite his bio?
 
@McNets Yes. As you'll see, he's not currently posting answers.
Unless you were referring to his reply here in chat as an answer?
 
@PaulWhite I've got used to @ypercubeᵀᴹ revisions. He usually finds some breach in my answers. That's good, but I think he answered a question today.
 
3
A: T-SQL equivalent to Python Pandas Concatenate

ypercubeᵀᴹSomething like this?: CREATE VIEW MyUnion AS SELECT a, b, c, d, CAST(NULL AS varchar(32)) AS e FROM table_1 UNION ALL SELECT a, b, c, CAST(NULL AS bigint) AS d, e FROM table_2 ;

So he did. Community Wiki.
 
11:56 PM
@PaulWhite oh, ok
 
yes, I did. I've put 4 or 5 answers since a year that I made that change in my profile
 
I need a valid spanish translation for: "transitive closure"
 

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