The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®

morning

3 hours later…

10:51 AM

A chairde - Morning all. Got my first jab (Pfizer... yaay...) - will get called in 2 - 3 weeks for second.

Tom V

11:50 AM

nice

John K. N.

12:23 PM

Morning

12:47 PM

Good morning

@Vérace Congrats on getting stabbed!

Indeed - I love my micro-chip - thanks Bill and George!

@PaulWhite I USE THEM VERY SPARINGLY AND THIS IS SLANDER ;P

So depending on how this meeting goes in a half hour I may or may not start dusting off my resume

Work has been so miserable lately and what I don't need are a bunch of people who don't do my job telling me to use AWS technologies that would make my job much, much harder to do.

Gotta wake up and smell that AWS coffee! :-)

I'm not opposed on principle, I'm opposed on the facts.

@bbaird - the "facts" being?

1:01 PM

@Vérace That 1. we don't have our primary data "in the cloud" 2. Building the "data lake" we'd need to start doing our primary work in the cloud is... a multi-year effort 3. Trying to use "big data" technologies to do anything other than text mining and/or aggregation is foolish

In the meeting, don't let them put you in a spot of demanding "the facts". Make them do a feature comparison between sql server and amazon's cloud.

then you ask for a "crosswalk"\

(idk what those are but they seem to take ages and cost a lot of money)

lol

I'd also ask what problem they are trying to solve

@James It's one I've already solved. Like, I built out the database and the ETL already. In three weeks. Alone.

lol, that's probably the problem. Now what does the company need them for?

1:06 PM

@bbaird Yes. Yes it is.

Basically. They had also had a consultant lined up to get the requirements and everything.

Gotta love dem consultants...

FTR - I've worked as one myself...

1:26 PM

@Vérace "Dem consultants" has a very different meaning in the US

Cade Roux

Morning to everyone except dem consultants

1:51 PM

@bbaird "Dem" was meant to be mildly humourous - have I missed somethig? Committed some ginormous faux-pas?

2:02 PM

The US political system is comprised of two major political parties: Republicans and the Democratic party. Dem consultants could be construed as political consulting for the D. party.

Can't have a glut of parties like you with FG, FF, Green and ... independents? Feel like I've heard others mentioned but too lazy to search

@billinkc First past the post, duverger's law, etc. etc.

@bbaird I have much ignorance of these poli sci things but a few moments with wikipedia will have me an expert

I would like to see ranked choice become the norm here. I think the trick is to implement it in school elections so it doesn't seem a foreign concept later in life. That and the metric system

@billinkc We have ranked choice in our city elections... I think it's gone to the second round once, for a city council seat

And the result would have been the same with first past the post

Anyone know an easy place to get a SVG of the SQL Server logo?

John K. N.

2:20 PM

U.K has a LIB-DEM party FWIW.

3:11 PM

We ditched FPP for MMP

swasheck

3:51 PM

you down with FPP? yeah you know me

@billinkc You forgot some - Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, People before Profit (PBP), Aontú... there are a few that didn't get seats - the National Party (yes, it's what it sounds like...), Renua, Irish Democratic Party...

swasheck

(dont know what FPP means, but it fit the rhyme)

First Past the Post - a primitive (non-proportional) system!

FPTP that is!

Or FPtP...

Gah, should have remembered SF. Never heard of Aontu though

Aontú - (Irish for Unity), splinter from Sinn Féin...

4:02 PM

ironic then

Indeed - Irish Republicanism is riven with splits ...

1 hour later…

Q: Select with fallback and default?

5:20 PM

Can the following code be converted to database queries? In our application we have a dictionary, where each value is given by in a table like: CREATE TABLE dictionary ( id serial NOT NULL, key text NOT NULL, language text NOT NULL, value text, PRIMARY KEY (id) ) Inserti...

This could be a good question if it were well specified

@bbaird so how did the meeting go?

@James Frustrating, but in sort of two ways. 1. The person I was speaking with is not trying to work against me. 2. The person who is working against me is a senior executive who shouldn't be telling me how to do my job.

haha, that can be the worst. We've got this terrible ETL tool called health catalyst because some executive went to a trade show. Now we are stuck with it because they don't want to look stupid.

@bbaird Perhaps their judgement has been clouded

6:08 PM

clouded hee... hee...

6:23 PM

Alrighty, just wasted half my day putting together a slide deck to convince people to let me keep the work I already did

For very inflated rates, you can engage my services and I'll provide said deck to executives and split the rate with you. Win/win/win

@billinkc How many Databricks logos can you put on one slide?

Including the watermark? 12

Hired!

6:47 PM

Hey - I want parf of that gig!

Q: How to avoid IX deadlock in check constraint

7:14 PM

I have following situation, I have a table with a primary key, and a constraint that I cannot have rows with specific requirements. For demonstration purpuses, here I have constraint that doesnt allow to insert duplicated values in N column. In real case, it checks several columns using foring ke...

sql-server deadlock

@bbaird asks a question on his alt

7:45 PM

@PaulWhite Looks like they're trying to replicate a unique constraint with a function? Can't bring myself to type my comment as an answer without more information.

@bbaird Well it's a simplified example apparently

And one that doesn't repro for me

And doesn't even work on a database with RCSI enabled

Perhaps they just need to invoke more mystic locking hints

8:20 PM

@bbaird Your comment would have been much better without the first sentence.

Yeah, really only applicable to the example. Too late to edit.

Not for me!

you sneak

It may be helpful to provide an example that is more representative of what you're trying to do - you can probably solve this without a scalar function. — bbaird 40 mins ago

Et voila!

thanks

8:26 PM

No worries. I know I tease you about the function thing, but in the hands of a beginner it is v dangerous.

Code copied from Stack Overflow and whatnot.

That question is a good example. Flapping around with TABLOCKX and HOLDLOCK hints.

Hannah Vernon

Those kind of hints remind me of seeing ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = OFF in a table/index definition. Good sign the OP doesn't have any idea of the implications or how locks actually work. Not that this is a problem for this specific situation though.