The Heap™ – Consultancy ©® - 2014-01-03 (page 1 of 2)

1:23 AM

My take:

0

A: Shall we add a new 'off-topic' reason for questions that are 'too basic'?

My problem is that "basic" is such a moving target and has a whole lot of relativity. And the gap is widened by the fact that the people who are active in closing questions have an inherent difference of opinion of where the basic line is compared to those whose questions are being closed. Whil...

ypercube

6:22 AM

@bluefeet GROUP BY (expression that yields TRUE or FALSE) is allowed in many DBMS I think.

Not sure which ones allow GROUP BY expression DESC (or ASC) though. MySQL for sure. And Access it seems.

gbn

8:30 AM

@bluefeet A MySQL extension

dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/group-by-modifiers.html

Based on the "GROUP BY implies ORDER BY" in MySQL

WHhch is deprecated: tocker.ca/2013/10/21/…

Jack Douglas

8:50 AM

cool, didn't know you could install SQL Server on Core :)

Simon Righarts

9:28 AM

@JackDouglas That'd be one of the main use cases for Core wouldn't it?

Admittedly I mostly like it because it scares off the weaklings :D

Jack Douglas

@SimonRigharts It's good for basic roles like ADDS

it's crying out for Exchange support

what I love most is that you can record an install script

Simon Righarts

@JackDouglas I'd mostly use it for key stuff that I don't want incompetent people touching :p

Jack Douglas

that's also a good thought, as long as they don't learn this command: Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature –online -Featurename ServerCore-FullServer,Server-Gui-Shell,Server-Gui-Mgmt

Simon Righarts

I assume that turns the Core instance into a regular Server instance?

Jack Douglas

10:00 AM

@SimonRigharts that's want it is supposed to do

ypercube

How a question with nonsense query produces 3 nonsense answers: stackoverflow.com/questions/20900583/how-speed-up-the-query

bluefeet

11:07 AM

@ypercube I;m not aware of MS Access allowing such behavior. I will have to test it later to find out.

Andriy M

11:43 AM

@gbn Indeed, but then MySQL extensions to GROUP BY would allow you to reference the alias too. On the other hand, MySQL wouldn't accept square brackets... The answerer appears to be utterly confused by the various SQL dialects.

Jack Douglas

1:30 PM

2

A: Shall we add a new 'off-topic' reason for questions that are 'too basic'?

I'm not sure if my experience is typical, but every DBA I've known has been asked by management to "teach the basics of SQL to the team". And they all had their own stack of PowerPoint slides to teach people how to join tables and use GROUP BY. It's far from a good use of their time (why not br...

this looks very sensible?

Paul White

1:47 PM

I've read it a couple of times and I'm still not clear what it is advocating.

Edward Dortland

@JackDouglas if he means: create a one time library of so called basic Questions and answers so in the future we can always redirect people with similar questions to these existing ones, I would say +1

Paul White

That would be no different from that which we already do for all questions.

Mark Storey-Smith

@EdwardDortland That's what SO is for

Jack Douglas

@EdwardDortland I think he means a single CW for 'how to learn the basics of SQL'

Mark Storey-Smith

and look what that does to @AaronBertrand's sanity

Paul White

1:51 PM

A single CW for learning SQL seems an ideal candidate for closing as too broad.

Jack Douglas

@PaulWhite it would be an exception

bluefeet

@PaulWhite It doesn't seem like he means a single CW. I think he means a CW for JOINS, a CW for GROUP BY, etc

Edward Dortland

Well I dont really mind if the default q/a is hosted on SO or on DBA, what I'm bothered about if we go for the " closed because of to basic" approach. that you leave a newby out in the cold. At the minimum I should point him to a source where he can find his/her answer

Paul White

I have no objection to basic SQL questions here, so long as they are good questions. The line between basic and not-basic has always seemed illusory to me.

Jack Douglas

@bluefeet "...either a single question..."

bluefeet

1:53 PM

@JackDouglas "... or several questions..."

Paul White

@bluefeet That could work. But again, these would just be canonical/wiki answers to ordinary questions. I see no need for special attention here.

Jack Douglas

@bluefeet I don't think that is such a good idea :)

Paul White

The right approach seems to me to answer "basic" questions well and then close future duplicates as, er, duplicates.

bluefeet

@JackDouglas I don't like the idea either. I was always under the impression that DBA was for more advanced DB stuff including SQL - basic stuff goes to SO

2

Jack Douglas

@bluefeet I'm honestly not sure SO wants it anymore

not if it was posted here that is

Paul White

1:55 PM

I'm not sure SO is very good at it either.

Jack Douglas

@PaulWhite exactly: I'd rather we gave an answer here

but not that we drown in it

bluefeet

The problem with SO is that most basic SQL questions are getting closed as minimal understanding now.

and people aren't getting any help

Edward Dortland

@bluefeet if we are the expert board then we should make sure all are answers are of expert quality even for simple questions:

-1 because copy only option with a full backup has nothing to do with LSN chains. Itresearcher pointed that out but you didn't update/delete your answer. — Edward Dortland 6 hours ago

Jack Douglas

we could easily end up with 50% of our questions very basic SQL

@EdwardDortland I think this is tiresome for our experts

we want this to be fun for them

bluefeet

@JackDouglas but I also see the argument that DBAs still need to learn basic SQL and coming to DBA would be helpful - but it is a catch-22 because we open ourselves up to crap!

2

Jack Douglas

1:57 PM

@bluefeet I see that too

@bluefeet this is actually why I like the idea of an excellent canonical answer

if it was a real help for beginners

but forced them to learn

Paul White

@JackDouglas That's not the same as saying 50% of our time would be spent on them.

Jack Douglas

rather than just "get their answer"

@PaulWhite true

but the more we have, the more we'll get

and we'll end up with high-rep users who don't know much

this is what I mean by dilution

Edward Dortland

not if we close the question as to basic and redirect them to a SO library

but, at the minimum, be helpful and redirect them

Jack Douglas

@EdwardDortland what's an SO library?

Edward Dortland

a group of Q/A's with the basics but created at SO if you want to keep the basic stuff away from dba.stackexchange.com

Paul White

2:00 PM

@JackDouglas I'm not so sure. There really aren't all that many good basic SQL questions. Once enough good answers exist, new ones just close as a duplicate. Hard to see how high-rep low-knowledge users could arise from that.

bluefeet

@EdwardDortland those probably exist already on SO, if you try to create it now it would probably be deleted.

Mark Storey-Smith

@JackDouglas I must be missing the point here. Surely this ends up being a book?

Jack Douglas

@MarkStorey-Smith A list of references I imagined

@PaulWhite finding the duplicates isn't that easy: if it was SO would have closed most of it's questions as dupes I think

Mark Storey-Smith

I don't see how it would be beneficial to have a 1001 CW answers for "you need a semi-colon at the end of that line" and so on

Paul White

There's no way you could sensibly cover learning SQL in one answer.

Jack Douglas

2:02 PM

you could give a man a place to start

Mark Storey-Smith

@PaulWhite nor one book

Edward Dortland

@Mark @paul I can totally see a lot of questions that can't be covered. I agree with you on that.

Mark Storey-Smith

@JackDouglas That would be google, with a minimal level of understanding required to operate it

Jack Douglas

@MarkStorey-Smith no need to answer the actual question: just, you are a complete beginner, never mind your actual problem go away and learn some basics.

Paul White

@JackDouglas We don't have that many super-active users with the ability to VtC questions. It wouldn't be so hard to get into the habit of closing as duplicate instead of VtC to move to SO, too localized or whatever people do right now.

Edward Dortland

2:03 PM

and even if we could cover, it would take days reading and searching to find your answer.

Mark Storey-Smith

@JackDouglas Yes, that

Paul White

@MarkStorey-Smith Quite. People have tried that and failed already :)

Jack Douglas

@PaulWhite that's a good option for actual duplicates if we can do it

but it isn't quite what this is about I think

Paul White

Perhaps I am missing the point.

Jack Douglas

which is the infinite variety of non-dupes that are trivial SQL problems

Aaron Bertrand

2:04 PM

@MarkStorey-Smith Or actually buying, I don't know, a book

Jack Douglas

I'm suggesting we close them all as dupes of one: "noobs start here" question

Mark Storey-Smith

@AaronBertrand Baby steps :)

Aaron Bertrand

I don't know what the "noob starts here" question could possibly contain

Jack Douglas

a summary of resources we'd actually recommend

links to documentation even

Edward Dortland

@aaron why should it be limited to our content?

Mark Storey-Smith

2:06 PM

@JackDouglas Which we then have to maintain.

Jack Douglas

@MarkStorey-Smith would it ever change?

I imagine not very often

Mark Storey-Smith

@JackDouglas And to be frank, I'm not interested in helping the sort of person that can't google their way to the docs for the platform they're using

Jack Douglas

@MarkStorey-Smith The Oracle Database Concepts guide isn't that well know but is a great place for an overview. I think there are folk that are worth helping who would not know what to Google.

Edward Dortland

@Mark if that is the case, Why should we act on Basic questions at all? Lets just auto delete them if they didn't generate a truly "added value" answer?

leave them on for x perdio of days and them auto clean...

Mark Storey-Smith

@EdwardDortland Sounds perfect to me

Jack Douglas

2:11 PM

@EdwardDortland that was the original idea of a "too basic" close reason

Paul White

Isn't that what happens anyway? Daft questions get down-voted, closed as too localized (or whatever) and eventually deleted.

Phil

@JackDouglas It's an amazing document

Mark Storey-Smith

@JackDouglas "too localized" suffices IMO

Edward Dortland

I can totally understand that if you've been here for a long time that the same old question drive you crazy.... but my point is, that closing questions qith just the reason. To basic, bye bye, sound to arogant, and at the minimum is not helpful...

Paul White

How would we define "too basic" anyway?

bluefeet

2:14 PM

@PaulWhite I think that is a large part of the problem

Edward Dortland

Well that's another point, because that is also very different per subject area and expert..

bluefeet

BTW @PaulWhite I like your cat face! :)

Mark Storey-Smith

@EdwardDortland Fair point. The close reason does have an explanation as to why a Q was closed however and a link to the relevant portion of the FAQ. Consider also that the majority of this type of questions arise from unregistered users that have no interest in participating here beyond getting someone to fix their current problem.

Paul White

A bad question is a bad question regardless of subjective evaluations like "too basic".

@bluefeet I've given up trying to earn new hats since I got the cat one!

Tim Stone

The cat one is one of the few that works well with my avatar, heh.

Edward Dortland

2:17 PM

@mark @PaulWhite, that why autoreculating might be the best thing. If nobody bothered to answer, then the community apperently found the question not interesting enough... You'll never have decission on a personal level.

That still doesn't deal with the M.ali situations ;-)

bluefeet

@AaronBertrand @JNK Did you get a lot of snow?

Aaron Bertrand

We have about 6"

Paul White

There may be value in maintaining a short per-product list of links to official documentation and maybe books we could recommend as part of the site FAQ. Not at all sure about the need for a close reason to point to it though. The ones we have already seem sufficient to me.

bluefeet

that's not too bad

Paul White

@EdwardDortland Auto-what? Sorry I don't understand.

Aaron Bertrand

2:19 PM

@PaulWhite sounds like something that could be added to each wiki

Paul White

@AaronBertrand Which "wiki" do you mean?

Aaron Bertrand

Both, e.g. the sql-server tag wiki and then individual version-specific ones e.g. sql-server-2012 would point to that version's BOL.

Edward Dortland

@PaulWhite auto delete after x days if nobody answered

JNK

@bluefeet I got like 5-6 inches it looks like

Paul White

@EdwardDortland Hm. Seems a bit unfair on good questions where someone able to answer it hasn't encountered it yet. Don't bad questions (heavily down-voted, no answers) already get deleted after x days?

Aaron Bertrand

2:21 PM

@EdwardDortland take a poll of how many questions - regardless of complexity - go unanswered for very long. The list is very small, and usually it's the too complex ones that people can't answer. There's always someone willing to get rep for simple questions (this is one of the negative aspects of SO IMHO).

Paul White

@AaronBertrand I imagine (and that's all) that fewer people reads the tag wikis than the FAQ.

Jack Douglas

@PaulWhite We can close a a dupe in that case, without need for a custom close reason.

Edward Dortland

@PaulWhite @AaronBertrand yes both valid points.

Aaron Bertrand

@PaulWhite probably true, but if we add a link to the close reason, and/or are diligent about pointing people there in comments when they do ask simple questions

Jack Douglas

@PaulWhite ie less than zero

2

Aaron Bertrand

2:23 PM

@JackDouglas did you just call Paul negative?

Paul White

ha ha ha

Jack Douglas

:)

bluefeet

I don't think I've ever seen so many stars from a single conversation.

3

Paul White

@JackDouglas To what would the dupe point?

@bluefeet I had to star that.

Jack Douglas

@PaulWhite the CW list of references

Paul White

2:25 PM

@JackDouglas Ah I see. I was thinking of a FAQ entry. Perhaps they are the same thing, I don't know much about how these things are organized.

Jack Douglas

@PaulWhite FAQ as in the help pages or meta?

Paul White

@JackDouglas You are just trying to expose my ignorance further now :)

Jack Douglas

oops

Paul White

@JackDouglas Help pages.

Jack Douglas

We don't have much control over them

Paul White

2:27 PM

I see.

Shame, because to create a CW list of references using the Q & A format, we'd have to break our own rules. A question like "what are good/official resources for learning SQL in Product x" would be closed as too broad, shopping list etc.

OTOH "Where can I find the official Oracle database concepts documentation?" seems quite reasonable. Why doesn't it exist?

Jack Douglas

@PaulWhite it's OK to break our rules :)

CW is pretty much for that purpose I think

Mark Storey-Smith

On a different note... @PaulWhite @SimonRigharts I'll be passing through Wellington on 12th March, beer's on me.

3

Paul White

No-one understands what CW is for.

Jack Douglas

very true

Paul White

And breaking our own rules is an odd precedent to set, especially for a mod :)

@MarkStorey-Smith Passing through? How come?

Looks like I'm heading into Welly in March then.

Mark Storey-Smith

2:31 PM

@PaulWhite In Sydney for a wedding 24th Feb to 3rd March, then visiting friend in NZ until 13th. In Auckland, out Welly, majority of time around Napier.

@PaulWhite Are you a long way out from Welly?

Paul White

No. Only an hour or so by train.

Mark Storey-Smith

Car might be a bad idea :)

Paul White

Fixed.

Excellent. I get to kill two stones with one bird. Can finally meet Simon at the same time.

Feels weird to have been using The Heap for its intended purpose for a while this morning.

3

Shawn Melton

Duplicate...one search on Google I found the other question on DBA.SE

0

Q: Get the job scripts out of a MSDB Backup

Long Story Short... my Database server died a month ago. I restored everything but the MSDB as the tape backup failed. I reconstructed some jobs but some essential ones are missing. I finally found the MSDB backup in an old partition, but here's the gist... it isn't a .BAK file but the actual dat...

sql-server-2008-r2

Andriy M

2:47 PM

@PaulWhite Why can't it be on our Meta? That wouldn't violate the rules, would it?

Paul White

@AndriyM Not very meta is it?

bluefeet

do we want this?

0

Q: Clustering and Deadlock in SQL Server 2008?

All, I am running into a deadlock in SQL Server 2008. Using a profiler I was able to determine that the deadlock happens as I am trying to select and update row(S) in table in 2 different sessions. The select query from the profiler is shown below select nodeinstan0_.id as id35_, nodeinstan0...

sql-server-2008 deadlock clustered-index non-clustered-index

ypercube

A nice answer:

1

A: An example of a relation without any functional dependency?

Real life example from Edinburgh The table below holds data for some popular pubs in the city. Name Capacity Area Brass Monkey 100 Centre Tourmalet 100 Leith Cask and Barrel 70 Leith Captains 60 Centre There are no functional dependen...

Paul White

@bluefeet What's is got to do with Clustering? Seems a very specific (localized) question. A better, more general question would likely be closed as duplicate of:

28

Q: What are the main causes of deadlocks and can they be prevented?

Recently one of our ASP.NET applications displayed a database deadlock error and I was requested to check and fix the error. I managed to find the cause of the deadlock was a stored procedure that was rigorously updating a table within a CURSOR. This is the first time I've seen this error and d...

sql-server sql-server-2008 deadlock

Andriy M

@PaulWhite As part of the answer to a question about good SQL resources, it would seem to me meta enough. I think the more reasonable part of common shopping list questions about SQL could reside on Meta.

Paul White

3:01 PM

@AndriyM I thought Meta was for questions about the main site, not as a home for off-topic questions.

I might be wrong though, it's just my opinion.

Jack Douglas

@AndriyM if it was on meta, it couldn't be the 'close as dupe' target

Andriy M

@JackDouglas It would be a FAQ resource that this community could manage, unlike the standard help FAQ. But Paul is correct, I was actually somewhat confused indeed. If Meta is about the (main) site, but not about the subject of the main site, then my suggestion is irrelevant

Jack Douglas

yes that's right on all counts I think

meta is the real FAQ

and you could have a general "why was my question closed with a link to this post"

but I think on balance main is better if we do this

bluefeet

vtc this

1

Q: pros ans cons in database design perspective, of subclasing or not when you have an especialization

Imagine that you have several tables that stand for activities: ProcessACtivities MedicalActivities MaintenanceActivities LogisticalActivities You now realize that all are activities, then, what would you do? you create a master table named "activities" and you add a type field for the values...

sql database-design semantic-analysis

pros/cons - off-topic

Andriy M

@bluefeet they seem to be asking about a specific DB design area and under certain conditions

I don't know if that makes the question narrow enough, though

bluefeet

3:12 PM

well just look at the answer by M.Ali - Option 1, Option 2, Option 3- kinda opinion based

Andriy M

@bluefeet the answer might be, but it didn't answer the Q in the first place

in my opinion :)

bluefeet

@PaulWhite well they have now cross-posted the question on DBA

0

Q: Indexing and Deadlock in SQL Server 2008?

I am running into a deadlock in SQL Server 2008. Using profiler I was able to determine that the deadlock happens as I am trying to select and update row(s) in table in 2 different sessions. The select query from the profiler is shown below: select nodeinstan0_.id as id35_, nodeinstan0_.BPMN_...

sql-server-2008 deadlock clustered-index nonclustered-index

FreshPrinceOfSO

@bluefeet i always take the heat

Paul White

@bluefeet Super! (Sigh)

2

bluefeet

@FreshPrinceOfSO I had enough of him yesterday on meta

Aaron Bertrand

3:22 PM

@bluefeet closed

FreshPrinceOfSO

2 more delete votes

-1

A: pros ans cons in database design perspective, of subclasing or not when you have an especialization

looking at your question the 1st thing came to my mind was Will all of the activites have same attributes ?and I think the answer is No. Medical, Logistics and Maintenance are quiet a different kind of process and they will their own processes with in the process and you will have very differen...

funny guy

@FreshPrinceOfSO this question seems to be OFF TOPIC and guess who has answered it ??? stackoverflow.com/questions/20844350/… — M.Ali 3 mins ago

Who upvotes this? — FreshPrinceOfSO 5 secs ago

billinkc

The correct thing to do here is not answer. — FreshPrinceOfSO 13 mins ago

Meta crawlers, anyone have a reference handy showing this to be the correct behaviour?

Aaron Bertrand

34

Q: How can we discourage people from answering bad questions? Should we?

It happens all too often someone will post a question with no regard to how the system works. They put in no effort whatsoever, their accept rate is often low as well and they come up with a questions similar to this one where it seems obvious to me that the OP has not tried anything, just wants ...

discussion

bluefeet

@billinkc there is no definitive answer on meta about answering off-topic questions - mixed

billinkc

durn

Andriy M

3:35 PM

@FreshPrinceOfSO his main point is probably that you aren't following your own prescriptions, by having answered (and consciously too, it seems) an off-topic question.

Aaron Bertrand

I think we've all done it, and it may be a bit hypocritical to go too far up this guy's tree about it.

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The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®