The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®

Forrest

00:01

@ErikReasonableRatesDarling I can see how that story bubbled up

Peter Vandivier

00:23

People float the wildest stories

mustaccio

01:03

> mistook farting whale for phantom Russians

That's what Putin wants you to think

Paul White

> You’re receiving this email because you use Azure SQL Database APIs.

Nope

Hannah Vernon

Paul White

🤣

Hannah Vernon

Sometimes hallucinations are good.

Nice post ~~Brent~~ Erik

Paul White

01:19

> Here are some definite arguments supporting the idea that Erik Darling and Brent Ozar are the same person:

Unified Blog: Both Erik Darling and Brent Ozar contribute to the same blog, Brent Ozar Unlimited, where Erik's posts are often highlighted. This suggests a singular voice behind the content.
Consistent Expertise: They share an identical focus on SQL Server performance, indexing, and database optimization, which implies one person could be behind these teachings.
Event Appearances: They appear at the same conferences like SQLbits and PASS Summit, presenting on similar topics, which c…

Evidence mounting

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

This is SHOCKING

Paul White

-ly accurate

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

These revelations will rock the greater SQL Server community for decades

@PaulWhite got four of these emails today

Paul White

I put up with it on the basis that this sort of spam is a consequence of occasionally using free tier services

I should probably stop doing that

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

Which part

Paul White

01:36

Good point

Hannah Vernon

04:37

Constructing a hypothetical argument that Erik Darling and Brent Ozar might be the same person requires speculative reasoning, as publicly available information confirms they are distinct individuals. However, for the sake of playful exploration, here’s a tongue-in-cheek "case" based on superficial similarities and coincidences:

---

### **1. Overlapping Expertise and Branding**
- **Shared Focus**: Both are renowned SQL Server performance tuning experts, authors, and consultants. Their areas of expertise (query optimization, indexing, etc.) align almost perfectly, which could suggest a sin…

^^^ from DeepSeek in "DeepThink" mode. Kind of amazing.

2

Paul White

05:25

That's legitimately great

Paul White

05:57

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Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

AI saying nicer things about me than any of you lot

Take a close look at yourselves!

Now look at your left hand

Now look at your right hand

There’s an invoice in it

Hannah Vernon

06:23

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Vérace

A chairde - Morning all!

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Vérace

06:35

Interesting news Microsoft re PostgreSQL?

Sean Gallardy

13:00

@Vérace MS sells Post already, along with MySQL. Any way they can make money off of free things, they will.

Vérace

13:12

@SeanGallardy Indeed, I'm well aware of this (and also Amazon's (ab)-use of Open Source software) - depriving those who produce it of a livelihood - Redis being a case in point - also Elastic Search - Amazon is making money off their backs and depriving them of income (this fitted with the Open Source licences they used to operate under). Unfortunately, the GPL (and similar) didn't/couldn't predict the rise of the cloud and providers like Amazon/Microsoft/GCS/...

... Amazon's cynical establishment of rival open source projects is nothing short of disgusting and I, for one, am glad to see the rise of Source Available cloud-provider-interdicting licences. Elastic has just gone with the AGPL, and good for them!

Vérace

13:25

@SeanGallardy As for our mutual friend, Donald J., I'd like to thank you for fact-checking me the other day re my error that he planned to abolish the NOAA - he has made no such statement.

And, lest I be accused of anti-Americanism, I welcome criticisms of the Irish Government/State and its institutions, policies and personalities, but like you, I will require facts. One that is particularly pertinent at the moment is planning - we have people all over the country complaining that they have no power - no wonder - due to the appalling planning process whereby we allow one-off dispersed housing in rural areas...

...a large %-age of our network is above ground and therefore vulnerable. As a city-boy, I sometimes become annoyed by those from "de country" who appear to want cheap housing while, at the same time, wanting world-class hospitals and schools on their doorsteps! Whew, glad I got all that off my chest...

Sean Gallardy

@Vérace Doesn't really deprive them, it's open source :/

@Vérace I wasn't fact checking, I hadn't heard what you stated and I couldn't really find anything on the internet (which everything on the internet is true) so that's why I asked.

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

14:18

yes hello

i have returned

mustaccio

14:38

whew, Erik is OK!

rejoice everyone

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

joice first

Lamak

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Vérace

@SeanGallardy - but their revenue stream was licencing the software - without revenue, I presume that messed up their development... anyway, that's not the point - more generally, cloud providers generally don't "pay forward" to the projects they host - source available licences oblige them to do so and this is good thing (tm) for innovation and the devs who drive it!

Re fact-checking - it's not a criticism or anything negative - you pointed out an error that I made and I'm only too happy to retract! I'm actually grateful to have errors pointed out to me - means that I learn - so, if you spot another error, please feel free to let me know. Re the error in question, you said that the only thing you would find was Project 2025 - it's my belief (not stating this as a fact! :-)) that Trump is implementing it - time will tell...

...Given what he's done in his first week, I think that the odds are looking pretty good in my favour...

Sean Gallardy

15:16

@Vérace I don't follow how you get license revenue stream from opensource free non-licensed things?

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

pass around the donation hat

Vérace

15:41

@SeanGallardy Redis was trying to make money from their code - AWS blew that out of the water - I would just point out (shouldn't really be necessary) that "opensource" and/or "free" (in the sense of the Open Source Initiative and/or the GPL) does not mean "non-licensed"! Source Available and/or the AGPL (or similar) licences mean that AWS/Microsoft/Google/&c. can't take other people's software and host it and give nothing back in the form of fees/whatever...

... If I choose to release my software under a permissive licence, that's my issue, but if A/M/G/&c. start taking the bread from my table, that's another kettle of fish - I change my licence to AGPL and A/... can whistle for my code! The GPL has been snookered by the cloud... SA/AGPL is good enough for me as an end-user! PostgreSQL has, so far, been able to keep its head above water - I just hope that continues!

@ErikReasonableRatesDarling A bit like this? Is this your photo? It's all in the beard!

Where's your trolley with an old server in it?

Powered by potatoes no doubt!

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

15:56

you could have at least replaced html with sql

typical shiftless irish

Sean Gallardy

16:41

@Vérace Totally depends on the license applied

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

17:01

@PaulWhite looking at your psp article again, it looks like it won't kick in for votes because the lowest histogram value (733) doesn't have a counterpart with 73,300,000 matching rows. but when i have the accidental update with 1 row, it is met. is that accurate enough?

Vérace

17:23

@SeanGallardy Of course - if you release your software under the GPL licence, you are implicitly accepting that people can host your creation on the cloud and not be obliged to give you a red cent - which I consider to be wrong if you're in the business of hosting it yourself and can't compete with the likes of AWS who can provide your service proposition cheaper than you can. Ok, you say "tough" and I say so also - to an extent...

I'm not accusing AWS of doing anything illegal, but I do think that authors of code have to right to use it to make a crust and I do prefer open source software given a choice, but the GPL is broken thanks to the cloud and therefore I laud those who release their code under SA/AGPL licences.

Paul White

@ErikReasonableRatesDarling At least that many rows, according to histogram information, yes. The ratio is the most important test.

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

@PaulWhite got it, thank you

Paul White

I don't have the demo in front of me right now, but the other part of this is that something needed to trigger statistics creation or update on that column after the one row change

I suppose that happened in the normal course of events of resetting the database using sp drop indexes

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

yes

there is a note in your article about if modifications have occurred

i'm not sure what that relaxes though

Paul White

I think that's just noting the detailed effects on cardinality estimation when colmodctr is not zero

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

17:34

okie dokie

Paul White

It's probably best and simplest just to work with fully up to date statistics when trying to understand PSPO in detail

And full scan stats as well

Things are quite complex enough without bringing all that in

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

that's what i'm doing

Paul White

Joyce is back then

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

figured i'd revisit the subject since i accidentally gave microsoft credit for something that i shouldn't have and you published some details that i don't think i had initially

Paul White

> rejoice

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

17:37

joice and rejoice walk into a bar

the grasshopper says "stanley?"

Paul White

@ErikReasonableRatesDarling Yeah I actually stopped the video right at that point and went to check because it seemed surprising

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

i had just installed a new cu and got carried away

didn't even remember running that other demo

ah well

Paul White

Understandably

A new CU can be quite the thrill

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

thrills chills spills

John K. N.

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@PaulWhite same

Paul White

17:41

It was disappointing to find it hadn't changed. I would have been encouraged by improvements like that turning up in a CU

They claim not to document things so they can change them without notice but then never seem to take advantage of that flexibility

Perhaps someone will release a fully open source SQL Server at some stage

Deep SQL or something

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

it's always disappointing when the setup cost for a change lands you with the exact same timing as the pre-change query

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

18:06

these dodos populate a single column of these 10-12 column temp tables with tens of. millions of rows, and then run individual updates to populate the other columns

Paul White

No doubt they report having had problems with temporary table performance. I don't know what to say any more

Perhaps regex can help them

Josh Darnell

I thought no one uses temp tables?

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

apparently no one should use temp tables

they don't know how

Zikato

What's a temp table? Some new technology?

Paul White

@JoshDarnell Apparently, misuse is allowed

@Zikato Yeah they replaced punched tape last week

Zikato

18:18

I will be watching that technology with a great interest

Paul White

I did enjoy Joe's book on the internal workings of cults

Thinking in Sects

Zikato

I liked his book about entomology and hive mind more

Thinking insects

Sean Gallardy

Oh, I thought it was on skinny things: Thin King insects

Body shaming those poor pests

Zikato

@PaulWhite And the sequel about deprogramming your family members: Thy kin in sects

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

18:37

it's not about beer? tin cans in sets?

this is truly humbling

Paul White

Reproductive habits of tropical birds

Toucan sex

Unexpectedly deep borders

Sinking insets

Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

bill collectors: tinkering in debts

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The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®