Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1000539 More actions · Answer 1

Sean Lange - Friday, August 10, 2018 7:17 AM

Beatrix Kiddo - Friday, August 10, 2018 6:20 AM

Shouldn't they be banned or something? (Edit: too slow.)

There needs to be an option for "rude/offensive" in the flag reasons. I have seen some people lose their minds on the forums but that is a whole new level.

And seriously Jeff...you need to start helping people instead of just trolling. 😀

😀

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.
"Change is inevitable... change for the better is not".

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)
Intro to Tally Tables and Functions

Phil Parkin SSC Guru Points: 245813 More actions · Answer 2

Thom A - Friday, August 10, 2018 2:40 PM

Don't mind me, just blowing off steam here.

This is on a different site, but it really annoys me when someone tells me that "this method" is better than mine, because theirs doesn't have the problem mine does, when in fact, it does. Not only that, but when you try to educate them on why, they refuse to believe it.

Had someone telling me that a CURSOR was an awful solution for something (without going into detail, it's not as it's repeating on objects not rows), however, that a self referencing variable isn't RBAR, and far better. A self referencing variable is RBAR. ARGH!!!!

/Rant over.

Thom, this rant is incorrectly formed: there is no /rant start tag 🙂

If you haven't even tried to resolve your issue, please don't expect the hard-working volunteers here to waste their time providing links to answers which you could easily have found yourself.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1000539 More actions · Answer 3

Thom A - Friday, August 10, 2018 2:40 PM

Don't mind me, just blowing off steam here.

This is on a different site, but it really annoys me when someone tells me that "this method" is better than mine, because theirs doesn't have the problem mine does, when in fact, it does. Not only that, but when you try to educate them on why, they refuse to believe it.

Had someone telling me that a CURSOR was an awful solution for something (without going into detail, it's not as it's repeating on objects not rows), however, that a self referencing variable isn't RBAR, and far better. A self referencing variable is RBAR. ARGH!!!!

/Rant over.

At least for entertainment purposes, I'd love to see that thread. Got a link that you don't mind sharing?

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.
"Change is inevitable... change for the better is not".

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)
Intro to Tally Tables and Functions

Thom A SSC Guru Points: 99009 More actions · Answer 4

Jeff Moden - Friday, August 10, 2018 2:46 PM

At least for entertainment purposes, I'd love to see that thread. Got a link that you don't mind sharing?

[/quote]

I'm not a massive fan on the community on the site, so I use a psuedonym on it. Would give the game away I'm afraid! Sorry 🙂

I wish there was an option to view the source code for posts, I have no idea why that quotebox looks awful (and has [/quote] at the end) in the post, but in the preview it's fine.

Thom~

Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk

Sergiy SSC Guru Points: 110192 More actions · Answer 5

Thom A - Friday, August 10, 2018 2:40 PM

Don't mind me, just blowing off steam here.

This is on a different site, but it really annoys me when someone tells me that "this or that method" is better than mine, because their/that method doesn't have the problem mine does, when in fact, it does. Not only that, but when you try to educate them on why, they refuse to believe it.

Had someone telling me that a CURSOR was an awful solution for something (without going into detail, it's not as it's repeating on objects not rows), however, that a self referencing variable isn't RBAR, and far better. A self referencing variable is RBAR. ARGH!!!!

/Rant over.

Hmm, you know, it's actually better.
And it's not exactly RBAR.

Unless we have different understanding of self-referencing variables.

Simple code to prove the point:
set statistics IO, time off GO declare @Time datetime set @Time = GETDATE()



declare @NumberOfNullableColumns int, @NullableColumn int
declare NullableColumn cursor for 
SELECT [is_nullable]
  FROM [master].[sys].[all_columns]
open NullableColumn

fetch next from NullableColumn into @NullableColumn 
while @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 
begin 
    SET @NumberOfNullableColumns = ISNULL(@NumberOfNullableColumns, 0) + @NullableColumn
    fetch next from NullableColumn into @NullableColumn
end 

close NullableColumn
deallocate NullableColumn

select @NumberOfNullableColumns [@NumberOfNullableColumns]

set @Time = GETDATE() - @Time
print convert(varchar(30), @Time, 121)
GO 
declare @Time datetime 
set @Time = GETDATE()

declare @NumberOfNullableColumns int

SELECT @NumberOfNullableColumns = ISNULL(@NumberOfNullableColumns, 0) + [is_nullable]
  FROM [master].[sys].[all_columns]

select @NumberOfNullableColumns [@NumberOfNullableColumns]

set @Time = GETDATE() - @Time
print convert(varchar(30), @Time, 121)

GO

If you try to catch statistics (or execution plans) you'll see bunch of "1 row affected" in case of the CURSOR, and single "NNNN rows affected" with the variable approach.

So, I guess, you're letting your steam out the wrong way. 🙂

_____________
Code for TallyGenerator

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1000539 More actions · Answer 6

Thom A - Friday, August 10, 2018 3:26 PM

Jeff Moden - Friday, August 10, 2018 2:46 PM

At least for entertainment purposes, I'd love to see that thread. Got a link that you don't mind sharing?

I'm not a massive fan on the community on the site, so I use a psuedonym on it. Would give the game away I'm afraid! Sorry 🙂

[/quote]
Don't forget that the Quirky Update uses a couple of "self referencing" variables and it doesn't fall into the definition of "RBAR".

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.
"Change is inevitable... change for the better is not".

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)
Intro to Tally Tables and Functions

Thom A SSC Guru Points: 99009 More actions · Answer 7

Jeff Moden - Friday, August 10, 2018 8:00 PM

Don't forget that the Quirky Update uses a couple of "self referencing" variables and it doesn't fall into the definition of "RBAR".

This was more for creating a string (not delimited, but same idea). I thought that that method was a hidden RBAR. Using FOR XML PATH and STUFF hugely out performs something like SELECT @Variable = (',' + @Variable,'') + @Variable FROM YourTable, and I was under the impression that the main reason is because SQl Server does actually produce the string in an RBAR method.

Thom~

Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk

Eirikur Eiriksson SSC Guru Points: 182631 More actions · Answer 8

Thom A - Saturday, August 11, 2018 4:37 AM

This was more for creating a string (not delimited, but same idea). I thought that that method was a hidden RBAR. Using FOR XML PATH and STUFF hugely out performs something like SELECT @Variable = (',' + @Variable,'') + @Variable FROM YourTable, and I was under the impression that the main reason is because SQl Server does actually produce the string in an RBAR method.

Have you tested this Tom?
😎
I've (in the passed, not tested this recently) found that SELECT @VAR = @VAR + [COLUMN_NAME] generally performs faster because of the XML overhead. The only reason for using the FOR XML method, is because that is the only way of guaranteeing the order of the elements.

Hugo Kornelis SSC Guru Points: 64748 More actions · Answer 9

Thom A - Saturday, August 11, 2018 4:37 AM

This was more for creating a string (not delimited, but same idea). I thought that that method was a hidden RBAR. Using FOR XML PATH and STUFF hugely out performs something like SELECT @Variable = (',' + @Variable,'') + @Variable FROM YourTable, and I was under the impression that the main reason is because SQl Server does actually produce the string in an RBAR method.

That method does work set-based (obviously at the execution plan level it is still RBAR, but that goes for each and every single query you ever execute). It performs a bit slower than normal set-based code, but lots faster than actual iterative code.

However, the real problem with this query pattern is that the language definition does not specify what the correct result should be. (And in fact, the result most people expect is actually the least expected based on strict interpretation of the documentation). For example, look at the code below, predict what it will return, then run it.
USE AdventureWorks2017; GO



DECLARE @v varchar(MAX) = '';

SELECT  @v = ', ' + d.Name + @v
FROM  HumanResources.Department AS d;

SELECT  STUFF(@v, 1, 2, '');
GO

DECLARE @v varchar(MAX) = '';

SELECT  @v = ', ' + d.Name + @v
FROM    HumanResources.Department AS d
ORDER BY  LEN(d.GroupName);

SELECT STUFF(@v, 1, 2, ''); GO

Hugo Kornelis, SQL Server/Data Platform MVP (2006-2016)
Visit my SQL Server blog: https://sqlserverfast.com/blog/
SQL Server Execution Plan Reference: https://sqlserverfast.com/epr/

Thom A SSC Guru Points: 99009 More actions · Answer 10

Eirikur Eiriksson - Saturday, August 11, 2018 4:49 AM

Have you tested this Tom?
😎
I've (in the passed, not tested this recently) found that SELECT @VAR = @VAR + [COLUMN_NAME] generally performs faster because of the XML overhead. The only reason for using the FOR XML method, is because that is the only way of guaranteeing the order of the elements.

Yes, that is something I made sure of before so. As things scaled, the self referencing variable performance really wasn't anywhere near close to FOR XML PATH. This was on my home environment though, but still, I wouldn't expect such a massive difference between the 2.

Thom~

Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk

Eirikur Eiriksson SSC Guru Points: 182631 More actions · Answer 11

Thom A - Saturday, August 11, 2018 5:49 AM

Yes, that is something I made sure of before so. As things scaled, the self referencing variable performance really wasn't anywhere near close to FOR XML PATH. This was on my home environment though, but still, I wouldn't expect such a massive difference between the 2.

If one can avoid reconstructing the XML for the output, the FOR XML PATH has only the penalty of a single XML operator, otherwise it gets quite expensive. I'll have to look into my notes but if I remember correctly, I wasn't doing very high cardinality in my tests, only few tens of thousands.
😎

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1000539 More actions · Answer 12

Thom A - Saturday, August 11, 2018 4:37 AM

This was more for creating a string (not delimited, but same idea). I thought that that method was a hidden RBAR. Using FOR XML PATH and STUFF hugely out performs something like SELECT @Variable = (',' + @Variable,'') + @Variable FROM YourTable, and I was under the impression that the main reason is because SQl Server does actually produce the string in an RBAR method.

Ahhh... Understood. Yes, it's a form of hidden RBAR but has few replacements. I actually wrote an article on it a very long time ago. The XML method tested out to be about 30% slower than the obvious RBAR method (including a scalar function) way, way back (IIRC, I was still on a 32 bit machine). I've not retested it since then.

Here's the link.
http://qa.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Test+Data/61572/

The only reason (back then) to use the XML method is because so many people are outraged by the use of scalar functions as well as the outrage about not being able to control the variable overlay (which you can, indeed!) or because you can't actually create the right kind of index to support the RBAR method.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.
"Change is inevitable... change for the better is not".

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)
Intro to Tally Tables and Functions

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1000539 More actions · Answer 13

Thom A - Saturday, August 11, 2018 5:49 AM

Yes, that is something I made sure of before so. As things scaled, the self referencing variable performance really wasn't anywhere near close to FOR XML PATH. This was on my home environment though, but still, I wouldn't expect such a massive difference between the 2.

It's all in the indexes, like the article says. 😉

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.
"Change is inevitable... change for the better is not".

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)
Intro to Tally Tables and Functions