Are the posted questions getting worse?
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J Livingston SQL wrote:
So, my personal and heartfelt request as a member of "the community that was", I'd love it if you and JLS (another recent revisitor) and a host of others that left because of the suck factor imparted by "site improvements) would get over all that (we were seriously spoiled by the old days) and make the realization that people make or break a site and that it's worth putting up with some of the "improvements" and decide to come back permanently.
Jeff -- happy to hang around, but without serious changes to the functionality of this forum, I feel we are flogging a dead horse. unless this forum is revised to attract new questions from new sql entrants ..then it be an "old farts" forum .. a lot of knowledge but no one that is interested.
It speaks volumes that so far there has been no reply from the admins et al to the recent comments....it isn't like there is a volume of posts to review!
Not everything is a conspiracy. I've been on holiday all week.
Steve is pretty constantly working on the new site with the devs. I get it. Hell, I agree. However, the old site, while functional in ways this one isn't, had a whole slew of issues, including security problems. It needed to be replaced. We're trying. May be we're failing, but we're trying.
----------------------------------------------------The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... Theodore RooseveltThe Scary DBAAuthor of: SQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuning, 5th Edition and SQL Server Execution Plans, 3rd EditionProduct Evangelist for Red Gate Software
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Grant Fritchey wrote:J Livingston SQL wrote:
So, my personal and heartfelt request as a member of "the community that was", I'd love it if you and JLS (another recent revisitor) and a host of others that left because of the suck factor imparted by "site improvements) would get over all that (we were seriously spoiled by the old days) and make the realization that people make or break a site and that it's worth putting up with some of the "improvements" and decide to come back permanently.
Jeff -- happy to hang around, but without serious changes to the functionality of this forum, I feel we are flogging a dead horse. unless this forum is revised to attract new questions from new sql entrants ..then it be an "old farts" forum .. a lot of knowledge but no one that is interested.
It speaks volumes that so far there has been no reply from the admins et al to the recent comments....it isn't like there is a volume of posts to review!
Not everything is a conspiracy. I've been on holiday all week.
Steve is pretty constantly working on the new site with the devs. I get it. Hell, I agree. However, the old site, while functional in ways this one isn't, had a whole slew of issues, including security problems. It needed to be replaced. We're trying. May be we're failing, but we're trying.
To be honest, what you've just done is a part of what a lot of people have done and it's a problem. That problem is that you continue to justify the problems. As you've just identified, the "new improved" version isn't functional in ways that the old one was. I get that the old one may have be less secure and SEO wasn't as good by why did fixing that stuff have to put the screws to everything else? And look at the recent events... messaging, followers, and following just up and disappeared from our profiles. Guess, what? That kind of stuff doesn't happen by itself. Someone made a change and seriously broke some stuff. That means that QA failed and no one did regression testing. They may have done a smoke test (yep, site is still there and we can do "things") but no regression check.
Frankly, you look and sound like a bunch of rookies or at least a bunch of people that just don't give a rat's patooti. It's really a shame and I'm really surprised at Redgate. Have been since the first regression that was labeled as in improvement and it just kept getting worse.
As you say, I appreciate that Steve put in an emergency ticket to get the latest break fixed. But, especially with this latest "improvement", that has become the norm rather than the very rare exception is should be.
Look what the people that have left and came back for a minute or two have stated. You don't need machine learning or AI or any of that to see that the fixes actually haven't been fixes. They've been strong issues with the users.
Use the old site usage patterns and features as you model and then fix your stuff. Security and all the other "improvements" you and Steve have spoken of since the git don't need to come at the expense of usability and features. It's really sad to see the decline that there's been and it's all because of "improvements".
--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 -
I was on the Visual Studio marketplace the other day. Stumbled across this tool.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MAQSoftware.SQLCodeCheck
I was hoping it would be a simple tool to root out basic issues in SQL code. These appeared in the list of recommendations.
I sent an email asking if the tool recommends using NOLOCK, or if the tool flags NOLOCK as a bad practice. Here is the answer I received:
Hello Michael, Yes, it is. The SQL Code Check performs NOLOCK check. NOLOCK is recommended to be used in SELECT queries. It prevents deadlock with other queries reading similar data.
By MAQ Software 8 hours ago
There have been over 6000 installs of this from the marketplace. Thanks MS for endorsing something that is clearly a worst practice.
Michael L John
If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
To properly post on a forum:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/ -
Michael L John wrote:
I was on the Visual Studio marketplace the other day. Stumbled across this tool.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MAQSoftware.SQLCodeCheck
I was hoping it would be a simple tool to root out basic issues in SQL code. These appeared in the list of recommendations.
I sent an email asking if the tool recommends using NOLOCK, or if the tool flags NOLOCK as a bad practice. Here is the answer I received:
Hello Michael, Yes, it is. The SQL Code Check performs NOLOCK check. NOLOCK is recommended to be used in SELECT queries. It prevents deadlock with other queries reading similar data. By MAQ Software 8 hours ago
There have been over 6000 installs of this from the marketplace. Thanks MS for endorsing something that is clearly a worst practice.
added some comments - likely to be ignored.
do hate when things like this become the "standard" for some people.
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frederico_fonseca wrote:Michael L John wrote:
I was on the Visual Studio marketplace the other day. Stumbled across this tool.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MAQSoftware.SQLCodeCheck
I was hoping it would be a simple tool to root out basic issues in SQL code. These appeared in the list of recommendations.
I sent an email asking if the tool recommends using NOLOCK, or if the tool flags NOLOCK as a bad practice. Here is the answer I received:
Hello Michael, Yes, it is. The SQL Code Check performs NOLOCK check. NOLOCK is recommended to be used in SELECT queries. It prevents deadlock with other queries reading similar data. By MAQ Software 8 hours ago
There have been over 6000 installs of this from the marketplace. Thanks MS for endorsing something that is clearly a worst practice.
added some comments - likely to be ignored.
do hate when things like this become the "standard" for some people.
I did. I didn't spend any time trying to figure out how to complain to MS though.
Michael L John
If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
To properly post on a forum:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/ -
Michael L John wrote:frederico_fonseca wrote:Michael L John wrote:
I was on the Visual Studio marketplace the other day. Stumbled across this tool.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MAQSoftware.SQLCodeCheck
I was hoping it would be a simple tool to root out basic issues in SQL code. These appeared in the list of recommendations.
I sent an email asking if the tool recommends using NOLOCK, or if the tool flags NOLOCK as a bad practice. Here is the answer I received:
Hello Michael, Yes, it is. The SQL Code Check performs NOLOCK check. NOLOCK is recommended to be used in SELECT queries. It prevents deadlock with other queries reading similar data. By MAQ Software 8 hours ago
There have been over 6000 installs of this from the marketplace. Thanks MS for endorsing something that is clearly a worst practice.
added some comments - likely to be ignored.
do hate when things like this become the "standard" for some people.
I did. I didn't spend any time trying to figure out how to complain to MS though.
Wow! That's even worse than what MS did on April 20th. They replaced the ol' REORGANIZE between 5 and 30% and REBUILD at >30% logical fragmentation with some serious mumbo-jumbo gobility-gook and STILL recommend the use of REORGANIZE as the early recommendation. It's amazing how lacking in knowledge the people writing MS documentation actually are and, in the spirit of this very thread, it seems like it's getting worse by the minute.
Combining this what the complaints about this site... It's because of things like the seriously incorrect documentation that MS keeps pooping out that I believe that SQLServerCentral must NOT fail. It needs to draw back a lot of the old timers that quit because of "improvements" and start drawing new/more people with questions. I don't visit SO very often but, when I do, I'm pretty much disgusted by the quality of the bulk of the answers and further disgusted that discussions are basically not wanted to the point of even being disallowed. SQLServerCentral is definitely needed in this world.
--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 -
J Livingston SQL wrote:
Redgate has grown to be a very successful company with a declared profit of 9.7M GBP in 2019 Fin Year....so it's not like they couldn't afford to sort many of the issues you and others have been mentioning for so long .....I do wonder how far up the chain of command these issues have got......maybe somebody somewhere is too comfortable and doesn't want to change the status quo, who knows?
To be totally honest, I think that Redgate's success makes them turn a blind eye to SQLServerCentral. I think they be looking at it as a burden rather than a blessing. After all, they now have Redgate forums... what else would they possibly need, right? If that's not true, they certainly haven't shown the site much love and the recent disappearance of functionality in user profilers shows that they're not exactly being careful with it.
If you look at what they did with Simple-Talk several years ago (they removed the forums), you have to wonder where this sister site is going.
--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 wrote:J Livingston SQL wrote:
Redgate has grown to be a very successful company with a declared profit of 9.7M GBP in 2019 Fin Year....so it's not like they couldn't afford to sort many of the issues you and others have been mentioning for so long .....I do wonder how far up the chain of command these issues have got......maybe somebody somewhere is too comfortable and doesn't want to change the status quo, who knows?
To be totally honest, I think that Redgate's success makes them turn a blind eye to SQLServerCentral. I think they be looking at it as a burden rather than a blessing. After all, they now have Redgate forums... what else would they possibly need, right? If that's not true, they certainly haven't shown the site much love and the recent disappearance of functionality in user profilers shows that they're not exactly being careful with it.
If you look at what they did with Simple-Talk several years ago (they removed the forums), you have to wonder where this sister site is going.
To my knowledge, and I'm the canary in Steve's coal mine, this site isn't going away. I haven't been privy to a single point of discussion even suggesting that. Maybe it's happening above my pay grade (and almost everyone is above my pay grade), but it's not being communicated down. This site, again, per what I know, is considered to be a valuable part of Redgate's assets.
Steve's first job is this site. He's going to know more about the internals & all the rest than I do. However, I'm on here every working day because answering the questions and supporting you guys is part of my job. Yeah, I was gone all last week, but it's called a vacation, and frankly, I turned off the computer. I'm back. I'll do what I can to help. Steve's still the big boss on here though.
----------------------------------------------------The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... Theodore RooseveltThe Scary DBAAuthor of: SQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuning, 5th Edition and SQL Server Execution Plans, 3rd EditionProduct Evangelist for Red Gate Software
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Grant Fritchey wrote:J Livingston SQL wrote:
So, my personal and heartfelt request as a member of "the community that was", I'd love it if you and JLS (another recent revisitor) and a host of others that left because of the suck factor imparted by "site improvements) would get over all that (we were seriously spoiled by the old days) and make the realization that people make or break a site and that it's worth putting up with some of the "improvements" and decide to come back permanently.
Jeff -- happy to hang around, but without serious changes to the functionality of this forum, I feel we are flogging a dead horse. unless this forum is revised to attract new questions from new sql entrants ..then it be an "old farts" forum .. a lot of knowledge but no one that is interested.
It speaks volumes that so far there has been no reply from the admins et al to the recent comments....it isn't like there is a volume of posts to review!
Not everything is a conspiracy. I've been on holiday all week.
Steve is pretty constantly working on the new site with the devs. I get it. Hell, I agree. However, the old site, while functional in ways this one isn't, had a whole slew of issues, including security problems. It needed to be replaced. We're trying. May be we're failing, but we're trying.
so after being "away" for 4 years or so, I will obviously not be aware of recent developments and proposals about this site.
Please can you encourage me a little with the proposed timeline for the delivery of the "new site" Steve is constantly working on. Encourage me even more by saying on which forum platform it is being built.
Cheers
________________________________________________________________
you can lead a user to data....but you cannot make them think
and remember....every day is a school day -
J Livingston SQL wrote:Grant Fritchey wrote:J Livingston SQL wrote:
So, my personal and heartfelt request as a member of "the community that was", I'd love it if you and JLS (another recent revisitor) and a host of others that left because of the suck factor imparted by "site improvements) would get over all that (we were seriously spoiled by the old days) and make the realization that people make or break a site and that it's worth putting up with some of the "improvements" and decide to come back permanently.
Jeff -- happy to hang around, but without serious changes to the functionality of this forum, I feel we are flogging a dead horse. unless this forum is revised to attract new questions from new sql entrants ..then it be an "old farts" forum .. a lot of knowledge but no one that is interested.
It speaks volumes that so far there has been no reply from the admins et al to the recent comments....it isn't like there is a volume of posts to review!
Not everything is a conspiracy. I've been on holiday all week.
Steve is pretty constantly working on the new site with the devs. I get it. Hell, I agree. However, the old site, while functional in ways this one isn't, had a whole slew of issues, including security problems. It needed to be replaced. We're trying. May be we're failing, but we're trying.
so after being "away" for 4 years or so, I will obviously not be aware of recent developments and proposals about this site.
Please can you encourage me a little with the proposed timeline for the delivery of the "new site" Steve is constantly working on. Encourage me even more by saying on which forum platform it is being built.
Cheers
Not to pile on, but what surprises me is that this site is, or should I say was, a marketing tool for Redgate. I understand the need for the new site. But now, 4 years later, there are still many aggravating bugs throughout the site.
I'm betting that there are a number of google searches that lead a person to SSC. I can see a person hitting this site for the first time, creating a login, and after a short time develop a very unfavorable opinion of Redgate.
I'm betting that SSC is not a great marketing tool for Redgate.
Michael L John
If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
To properly post on a forum:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/ -
Michael L John wrote:
I'm betting that SSC is not a great marketing tool for Redgate.
It used to be and could be/should be again.
--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 -
What about an open source SQL Server project to create a generic forum with no dependencies on UI and which allows for a 3rd party OAuth 2 identity provider? The Forum API project is still an option. It seemed like nobody had anything to say about it.
Aus dem Paradies, das Cantor uns geschaffen, soll uns niemand vertreiben können
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J Livingston SQL wrote:
Jeff -- happy to hang around, but without serious changes to the functionality of this forum, I feel we are flogging a dead horse. unless this forum is revised to attract new questions from new sql entrants ..then it be an "old farts" forum .. a lot of knowledge but no one that is interested.
It speaks volumes that so far there has been no reply from the admins et al to the recent comments....it isn't like there is a volume of posts to review!
My apologies. I have been on holiday for a week, so I didn't see this until today. I appreciate the comments and have forwarded some on. I have filed a few bugs lately. Some backend work took place across the last month or two, and I suspect a few things with PMs and profiles were impacted and no one noticed. It's not like I check those that often, and a few other bugs cropped up that no one expected based on the work. The work was optimizing some compression, and trying to improve some speeds.
We don't have admins watching this thread, other than me. Mostly it's others that look for problem reports and monitor the webmaster email. This wouldn't be something that is checked. We do get hundreds of posts a day, so it is quite a bit to get through.
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/way0utwest
Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help
My Blog: www.voiceofthedba.com -
I dropped a quick note above but wanted to do a slightly longer post here since many of you are long-time members and supporters.
I do appreciate all the time you've spent here and the work to help users. I do use that when advocating for changes and trying to improve the site.
This site is marketing for Redgate, like many sites for other companies. It is great marketing, which is a double-edged sword. We have a large community that serves the interests of many people around the world. However, Redgate isn't in the business of building web sites. That is no different than many other companies that run their own website. We are a bit different in this is not run directly by the company. I have fairly free reign as an editor, without too much influence or pressure, so we aren't only talking about products.
However, this also isn't directly related to our business of selling database software tools, so it often gets a lower priority of resource use than redgate.com or some of our internal sites. I do have to argue and push for devs to tackle tickets, unless something is high priority. Much of what you complain about here isn't in that category, and it's a regular struggle to get resouces. Again, fair criticism from above that "To be honest, what you've just done is a part of what a lot of people have done and it's a problem. That problem is that you continue to justify the problems. As you've just identified, the "new improved" version isn't functional in ways that the old one was." That is very nonspecific. I don't know what "isn't functional" refers to and can't do anything with that statement.
I'm not justifying this, and it's slightly maddening on some days to me. I don't focus on the software dev stuff every week, though I likely need to put a bit more pressure on our devs. They have multiple responsibilities for other sites, and their time is split, like it is for every one of you. Getting time to work on changes to a lower priority area is just a challenge.
The good thing is that this site is built on WordPress, which is a bit of a corporate standard and when I get a resource, they know much of the underlying structure. They do get some things fixed quicker than in the past, and more importantly, faster than if I had to explain of have someone dig into a custom coded site. Building your own sounds great, until you realize that maintenance is hard, keeping devs trained is hard, and security is often not done well. So many places struggle with security and spam, and often quickly disappear. While you might think security is easy, it's not. Making a mistake on a site this size could easily result in it being shut down, or substantial problems for Redgate. Think about the Solarwinds hack last year, that still has repercussions, and it's costing them money. Our profits could disappear quickly with a large security breach.
We are a profitable company, and those profits are invested back to the business and as employee profit sharing. However, that isn't directly related to investment on this site, just it isn't in most organizations. While there are some people that see value in SSC, there are some that don't. I do have to advocate and argue for resources. No different from any company in which I've worked. I'm not always successful. I also have to decide how to prioritize the arguments and weight I give to issues. If everything is a critical issue, nothing is a critical issue.
Case in point. The "page calculation" bug in this thread is annoying to me. To many of you as well. They've tried a few fixes, and claim they can't determine why it doesn't work. No other thread shows this behavior, and frankly, I suspect it's not "challenging" to them as devs, and an uninteresting problem. Each for them to point to this as the longest thread in the world. In fact, when we searched out forum vendors, no one had seen a thread remotely this size. It's absolutely crazy. It's hard to get them to take this as serious when this bug is a) complex, b) affects a dozen people, and c) isn't interesting. I am going to argue about this a bit tomorrow when people return, as it's really gotten annoying now that it's two pages. Maybe even more annoying to me, I'm arguing the font coloring of the active page seems to be gone, at least to my old eyes.
A number of you don't like the new site. Lots of people do, and prefer the cleaner lines and less "stuff" than in the old site. I honestly don't know how to reconcile the overall view because a few of you complain a lot, but you use the site a lot and that matters to me. At the same time, lots of people use the site lightly and like how things look and work.
At this point, I'm unsure of where to go. Certainly the profile / PM stuff needs to be fixed, and the calculation bug here could be better. The "speed" of the loading for pages, is tough. There is caching, and that works well, but some items are slow. Active threads, which I use frequently takes about 8 sec. Trying to advocate for perf work to get this to 3-4 sec doesn't seem productive to me. Many of the article pages, Question of the day, etc. load in 1-2 s often, which seems acceptable. I have a few feed bugs out there, and some styling ones, a few missing attachments.
We had a lot of trouble with SPAM on the old site, and when we started this one. However, the engine now marks a lot of stuff quickly. We've given you the ability to mark stuff as spam, and that cleans up the feeds quickly. I think it's much better than it was, but no one has a great system for getting rid of all spam, especially while allowing people to post freely. Certainly not when we try to send out notifications quickly.
I appreciate the comments, and they have my attention. However, from the side of someone that builds software, many of these are complaints and not well reported. Specific reports of things I have tried to act on, not always successfully, but I do try. I will continue to do so, when there are good reports. When there are just complaints of general issues, it's really, really hard to do anything other than be sad and unsure of what would even help. That sounds like every other company, but I also see this from the side of most companies. Users don't report well. How often do you have to ask for more information from an original poster? I'm often in the same boat here.
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My Blog: www.voiceofthedba.com -
So here's a random thought based on your last post, Steve. If this is the longest thread in the world, how do we get it into the Guinness book of world records?
I'm being serious here. Think of the press that would generate for the site and for Red Gate.
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