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Simon Righarts

12:02 AM

@NickChammas People taking their internet reputation way too seriously, why I never ...

@Shog9 That's a dead link (removed - moderation) - which question was it?

Shog9

@SimonRigharts Edited to SO link - I just reversed the migration.

Simon Righarts

12:53 AM

Argh, having another "people are wrong on the internet" moment.

1

A: SQL Server "empty table" is slow after deleting all (12 million) records?

(NOTE: I am not a DBA) DELETE is a logged operation, and it doesn't free the space used. You probably have a large transaction log taking up space and table scans running on the 'empty' table space. I'd guess you need to clear the transaction log and shrink your database. This StackOverflow arti...

Also can someone check my answer and make sure I'm not wrong as well? :D

Margaret

2:23 AM

Is there a good place/way to ask a question that basically amounts to "How do I check the contents of my data are what I want them to be?" I'm sure this is a solved problem, I just don't know the solution.
Background: I work for a (smallish) organisation that does data analysis for hospitals; we tell them to send their data to us in whatever form they have, then we standardise it and send them reports with benchmarking results back. The problem is, human error inevitably occurs, generally at the 'standardisation' stage, and is not caught until much later, so we wind up sending data with e…

Simon Righarts

6:59 AM

@Margaret Data validation isn't really a solved problem in the way you seem to think. That said I'm sure there's a bunch of options for, essentially, test frameworks (so for organisation A's data you run queries A1, A2 and A3 etc. For organisation B's data, run queries B1-B5 etc), but coming up with the validation queries will still depend on the input

(I used to have to do something similar at my old job, staff would enter all sorts of junk and I'd have to filter the worst and tidy up the rest before we submitted it for funding)

My personal best was an appointment (that should have been two hours at most) that ended five months and three days before it started. I have no idea how the staff managed that one.

Martin Smith

7:27 AM

@NickChammas The cases are quite similar but not for the reason you suggest. For both of the questions at time of migration the highest voted answer was on +2 and all other votes were given on the target site.

Simon Righarts

7:40 AM

Is it bad I feel like responding "Your ERD is only over-complicated if it's more complicated than it needs to be." to that flight-booking ERD question?

gbn

7:54 AM

@SimonRigharts It's too simple IMO

Simon Righarts

Yeah I was trying to model it and gave up

Like a given aircraft might have three different classes of seats (economy, business + first) with different numbers of each

each flight number might be flown by multiple aircraft

gbn

and I'm not going to design it for him. I'm paid to do this

Simon Righarts

and each aircraft will definitely have multiple flight numbers

gbn

yes

Simon Righarts

I'm not paid to do that (yet) but yeah that comes under "outside the scope of questions you should ask the internet for answers to"

gbn

7:59 AM

@SimonRigharts Part of my developer DBA job

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa290383%28VS.71%29.aspx

Simon Righarts

I'm a junior (senior) DBA, we have a data architect to handle this stuff

gbn

I'm code monkey, DBA and Architect currently. Small, new, gaming company

Simon Righarts

It sounds like a pretty cushy number, spend all day tinkering with power designer, occasionally yell at developers for doing stupid stuff

gbn

6 months ago I was part of a 40,000 employee global bank

Simon Righarts

then again data architects probably think being a DBA is a cushy number too

it's all relative

gbn

8:01 AM

@SimonRigharts Kind of. But the load you can get is frightening

Simon Righarts

the fun thing is that assuming you're competent and have a usable budget, being a DBA doesn't have to be all stress all the time

actually you don't even have to be competent as long as you inherit a system that was set up competently and don't tinker with it without supervision ;)

... I'm not talking about myself there, no sirree.

gbn

@SimonRigharts indeed

if you're firefighting and reacting, you're doing it wrong

Proact and anticipate

Simon Righarts

Any new situation is probably going to have a certain amount of technical debt to overcome, but if the job starts out absurdly stressful and doesn't get easier week by week then you're fighting a losing battle

getting back to the airline ERD I'm halfway tempted to try and come up with a complete-as-possible ERD as a sort of homework exercise

but I'm worried it'll turn out looking like this: howardlewisship.com/images/t5-service-dependencies.jpg

gbn

8:18 AM

@SimonRigharts way too much effort for me

Simon Righarts

@gbn That's why I said "halfway tempted" ;)

gbn

@SimonRigharts I'm sure you have better things to do, like go to the pub

Simon Righarts

@gbn funny you should mention that I just got home from the pub actually

gbn

he he

Simon Righarts

I think the vodka is affecting my decision-making

Also that ERD I just linked gives me the heebie-jeebies. It's like an ERD that ate the enterprise party-pill

ypercube

8:24 AM

If you make this ERD, you could probably put it as an answer to this question, too: stackoverflow.com/questions/9605795/…

Simon Righarts

As a "make this diagram planar and I'll give you a cookie" counterexample?

ypercube

yes, as a counter-example

Simon Righarts

I'm assuming by planar they mean don't cross the streams, er lines that is

ypercube

that's the standard definition of planarity

Simon Righarts

Hmm I'm trying to picture it in my head, I think you can make a four-entity ERD completely planar

not sure about five-entity (assuming every entity is linked to each other)

ypercube

8:31 AM

Planar graph

{|class="wikitable" align="right" !colspan="2"|Example graphs |- ! Planar ! Nonplanar |- | align="center" | Butterfly graph | align="center" | K5 |- | align="center" | The complete graph K4 is planar | align="center" | K3,3 |} In graph theory, a planar graph is a graph that can be embedded in the plane, i.e., it can be drawn on the plane in such a way that its edges intersect only at their endpoints. In other words, it can be drawn in such a way that no edges cross each other. A planar graph already drawn in the plane without edge intersections is called a plane graph or planar e...

A complete 5-node graph is not planar.

Simon Righarts

So, essentially, any non-trivial ERD is likely to be non-planar

Posted an answer to that SO question, although it's the sort of answer that leaves more questions than answers

Mark Storey-Smith

8:50 AM

Morning all

Simon Righarts

Morning Mark

Just tested with the neighbour through the wall - they can't hear my music even at max crank. I love having an apartment with proper soundproofing

(Not that I listen to music ridiculously loud, just moderately loud)

gbn

@MarkStoreySmith Hello

Phil

9:19 AM

Morning

Phil

9:47 AM

What timezone does the consecutive visits counter use? I've been robbed several times :/

Simon Righarts

@Phil I'm led to believe it's local time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of the american timezones

or maybe even GMT, who knows

Phil

Okiedokie

ypercube

22

Q: What is an SE "day"? When does each day start?

When does a day start on the Stack Exchange network? Some badges (Enthusiast, Fanatic, Mortarboard) and voting limits are bound by and relate heavily to the concept of a day. Do days correspond to calendar days? What time zone is used? Related Are there any voting limits? Return to F...