KurtSchroeder.com

Archive for the ‘Strange Bizarre And Totally True’ Category

Before i got fired the one and only time in my life:  My two genius bosses configured a virtual server with 512Mb and were planning to run W2K3, IIS, and sql 2003. I told them at least three times they should consider upping it to 1Gb. I had experience with this, made the same error, and learned from it.

Using ‘Like’ in a query is never good practice, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. This was the case on a join with two tables each containing about 200 records each. They came from difference db’s. This was a one shot query for data checking only. The query, run in SMS, took 24 seconds. I said, “guys, we have a problem”. Rather than admit he made a simple error or at least try adding the extra memory i was told the reason was my use of Like in the query. I was totally shocked and expressed my disbelief at what i just heard. I argued with him. I’m not prone to argument, but this was a huge exception and well warranted! The next day ‘Boss#1’, #1 for short (you got kids? Think about it), publicly reprimanded me not for arguing, but for not accepting #2’s #2 type answer. As I said, I am not prone to arguing and I will not waste my time and emotions on a futile shouting match with an obvious outcome. I came to this conclusion when I opened my mouth to suggest a “possible” reason, and was all but told loudly to shut up and then loudly told, “No #2 said you are wrong.  Kurt, don’t talk, I, #1, say YOU ARE WRONG! And “THE” #2 said YOU ARE WRONG” We will never know if I was right, #2 was right, or if we were both wrong because the physical server hosting the VM died due to a hardware failure on the following Monday. For all I know the guy took a degaussing magnet to the server. I sincerely do not believe this, but for the first time in my life, with 12 years of SQL experience mostly doing complicated queries on stock market data I was just publicly reprimanded for not accepting the conclusions of #2. After that I was ready to believe anything was possible from #1 and #2. Here is an interesting side note they both forgot. I had worked there about 2 years earlier (I was asked to come back by #1) and they both were talking about “Update Joins” not being possible. The concept of aliasing a table was considered confusing and bad practice by them at that time, so of course they couldn’t do it. In less than 1 minute I showed them both how it was done by giving them an example.