@JoeObbish Hey there. I was just reading through some of the messages above. I don't really have time to keep up with this chat room so I haven't been here in a while. But I noticed that a couple of questions got some up votes and couldn't figure out why / how (Google doesn't show any links pointing to them) so I thought I would check here.
@JoeObbish And I don't really know what to say. If the comments above are not sarcasm (I truly do have a difficult time taking compliments) then to say that I am flattered doesn't seem to capture it. Would it be appropriate to simply say that I am honored? Or even better to say that I am honoured? ;-)
I also have a hard time finding where particular threads of a conversation start in formats such as this ;-)
@JoeObbish Thank you (really) for such kind words / sentiment 😺 (happy cat, if it is hard to see). With regards to votes, I think it might be related, at least to some degree, to familiarity with the subject matter. Meaning, I think some topics, regardless of any answers, are by their very nature higher level subjects.
And so I think it is easier to get more votes on topics that a larger population of readers is familiar with. And it is harder to get votes on answers where the general population is less familiar with the topic, or the technicalities of the topic, regardless of the correctness and/or quality of the answer.
I have wondered about this for a while since I have some answers that I am really proud of but have low vote counts, yet one of my highest voted answers (tied for 1st and for a while was my highest) was one that I never felt was that spectacular. However, it is on a topic that most people have at least heard of and know the basics of (I would hope!): SQL Injection. And that is the only answer I have ever gotten 20+ votes on in a single day!
@sp_BlitzErik I am stuck in a sort of paradox there. I know I write long answers and articles, and I have gotten dinged on reviews at work (pretty much every year) for writing emails that are too long and that people don't want to read because they don't have the time. BUT...
even knowing that I should condense the material, I never know what to leave out. I am a firm believer in the idea that the more information one has, the better one can either a) understand a concept, or b) make a good / appropriate decision. So what details are ok to omit?
What if those details truly are pertinent to what issue is at hand? How can I decide what info someone else needs for whatever the situation is, especially when information gets re-applied to future situation having slightly different requirements. So, I err on the side of providing whatever info I can find, figuring that one can ignore what is there but not learn info that was left out.
@srutzky Yeah I know what you mean. I've had similar thoughts but I don't think that I would have been able to express them so completely
With work there's at least some chance that you'll know the experience level of the person asking the question. On SE I find it difficult sometimes to figure out what to include because I don't know what the asker already knows.
Usually I solve that problem just by writing to the level of detail that I want to
@Lamak Regarding Hank Scorpio: I picked him mainly for his attitude. Always chipper and positive, and didn't let things like being shot at get in the way of a completely unrelated conversation (i.e. Homer quitting). Also, he knew exactly where to get hammocks (the hammock district, of course).
@JoeObbish Mainly, do you mean any single Code Point, or do you mean one or more Code Points that form what most people consider a "character"? Meaning, a single Code Point of "n" with an accent can also be expressed as an "n" without the accent plus another Code Point for the combining accent where both appear to as the single "n" with the accent.
@dezso I thought about the design of copying data between remote db. One possible solution would be to user a dblink to cross the bridge between the 2 dbs. That's possible feat with RDS. But once done, I would need some kind of trigger that would poll specific tables in the distant db and do an insert in the source db. Is there a kind of postgres code that can do that like a trigger or some kind of postgres agent by any chance?
@AndyK It's the end of the last sentence that I'm primarily concerned about. Do you think my version conveys the same intention as the original? The original isn't very clear, if I'm entirely honest, but at first I thought I understood it.
that would poll specific tables in the distant db and do an insert in the source db = that would poll specific tables in the distant db and retrieve the lines that are in the distant db but not in the source db, all every hour or so.
@AndriyM the sense convey by the OP is ... unclear. You've amended it to what you are understanding but in this case, by reading it for the 3rd time, I'm not sure about what the OP mean at the end of his question
What is best way to extract tokens from a string into a date ? I have columns with this value : Prepaidcards_07604_2017-06-15-15-34-39.csv and I need the _2017... etc part to become a date. (2008). I guess that I have to manualy parse the string ?
Why can an INLINE UDF be ordered using SELECT TOP 100000 but it can't using SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT? http://dbfiddle.uk/?rdbms=sqlserver_2016&fiddle=91519fea20eff927af7b985b76f222b7
@McNets In both cases, the ORDER BY only determines which rows TOP applies to. It does not do anything for the final output. You always need an ORDER BY at the top level of the outermost query for that.
SELECT * FROM dbo.fnTree100() ORDER BY path OPTION (MAXRECURSION 0); and SELECT * FROM dbo.fnTree() ORDER BY path OPTION (MAXRECURSION 0);
@dezso I thought you used the word "conservative" in response to my using the word "liberty", as though you jokingly took it as a political reference (as in conservatives vs liberals). So I decided to throw in "labour" into the mix, to keep up the joke.
@JoeObbish Sorry, wasn't trying to be difficult. You had prefaced the question with "seems like a good quiz question" so I thought you were going for something specific. I think it would be a good question to ask ;-), but for now, I will say (with respect to MS SQL Server in which UTF-16 is the only Unicode option):
If speaking of individual elements (something that has a single value in a character set) then it is 2 bytes for VARCHAR and 4 bytes for NVARCHAR. If speaking of what is considered a "letter" or "character" in a language, then it should still be 2 bytes for VARCHAR but varies by language for NVARCHAR / Unicode, and might realistically go up to 12 perhaps?
