4 ms·

Public service announcement: if you haven't read the table of contents of your RDBMS of choice, please do it now. Bonus points for reading a couple of chapters.

by baq 3y ago

Public service announcement: if you haven't read the table of contents of your RDBMS of choice, please do it now. Bonus points for reading a couple of chapters. It's amazing how much work an average developer could save himself if they knew just a bit more than basic SQL constructs and the average operator if they knew a bit more than basic configuration options. I'm not asking to read the whole manual. (If your RDBMS is SQL Server or Oracle, that'd take a while...) Just the table of contents, so you know what you don't know.

Inviz 3y ago
care to share that one special trick?
jeremyjh 3y ago
In my first software job I didn't have enough to do all day, my defined responsibilities were less than 15 hours a week. I found other useful stuff to do, but there was still a ton of downtime. This was in 1999, I had no phone to scroll. I read "Inside SQL Server" cover to cover (400 pages). This was a huge lift to me, I understood so much more about writing efficient queries and tuning - I was nearly fresh out of college and better at SQL than anyone else in my department. I'm still benefiting from this today, even though I haven't used SQL Server itself since 2008. New knowledge latches onto existing knowledge, and the gains accumulate your whole career. I'm still in the habit of reading books when I pick up a new technology. It isn't necessary to get things done - I've never read a book on python but can still get things done in it - but making the book bedtime reading has been really effective. I don't try to memorize or apply everything, or even do the exercises. I just read it, and even if I don't remember the details, I'll know the features are there. How else will you learn what you don't know that you don't know?
- tracker1 3y ago
  Similar here... also, when you need to reference something from a book, I find it easier to recall roughly how far into a book it was physically. Vs trying to search for something in digital media. I am not using mostly digital as having a lot of physical books is a pain at times, and easier to read an ereader in bed.
elzbardico 3y ago
While I can't stand Oracle as a company, I have very fond memories of Oracle RDBMS documentation around the early 2000s. And the product itself was also leagues ahead of the competition. I feel guilty even today thinking about the SQL abominations I've thrown at it under the guidance of a very ambitious product/project manager that seemingly didn't understand the difference between a OLAP and an OLTP instance. And most of the time, the optimizer and query engine and whatever governed the allocation of resources in Oracle found a way to satisfy my SQL monsters without bringing everyone else down to a halt.
fforflo 3y ago
Exactly. Especially around UPDATE [0] and MERGE [1]. A lot of "data engineering" complexity and data pipelines are necessary because of the lack of more-than-superficial knowledge of SQL. Inexperienced developers talk about DAGs of execution and whatnot, without ever realizing they describe atomic (ACID) operations an RDBMS can do out of the box. [0] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/sql-update.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/sql-update.html [1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/sql-merge.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/sql-merge.html
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by baq 3y ago

Inviz 3y ago

care to share that one special trick?

jeremyjh 3y ago

In my first software job I didn't have enough to do all day, my defined responsibilities were less than 15 hours a week. I found other useful stuff to do, but there was still a ton of downtime. This was in 1999, I had no phone to scroll. I read "Inside SQL Server" cover to cover (400 pages). This was a huge lift to me, I understood so much more about writing efficient queries and tuning - I was nearly fresh out of college and better at SQL than anyone else in my department. I'm still benefiting from this today, even though I haven't used SQL Server itself since 2008. New knowledge latches onto existing knowledge, and the gains accumulate your whole career. I'm still in the habit of reading books when I pick up a new technology. It isn't necessary to get things done - I've never read a book on python but can still get things done in it - but making the book bedtime reading has been really effective. I don't try to memorize or apply everything, or even do the exercises. I just read it, and even if I don't remember the details, I'll know the features are there. How else will you learn what you don't know that you don't know?

tracker1 3y ago
Similar here... also, when you need to reference something from a book, I find it easier to recall roughly how far into a book it was physically. Vs trying to search for something in digital media. I am not using mostly digital as having a lot of physical books is a pain at times, and easier to read an ereader in bed.

elzbardico 3y ago

While I can't stand Oracle as a company, I have very fond memories of Oracle RDBMS documentation around the early 2000s. And the product itself was also leagues ahead of the competition. I feel guilty even today thinking about the SQL abominations I've thrown at it under the guidance of a very ambitious product/project manager that seemingly didn't understand the difference between a OLAP and an OLTP instance. And most of the time, the optimizer and query engine and whatever governed the allocation of resources in Oracle found a way to satisfy my SQL monsters without bringing everyone else down to a halt.

fforflo 3y ago

Exactly. Especially around UPDATE [0] and MERGE [1]. A lot of "data engineering" complexity and data pipelines are necessary because of the lack of more-than-superficial knowledge of SQL. Inexperienced developers talk about DAGs of execution and whatnot, without ever realizing they describe atomic (ACID) operations an RDBMS can do out of the box. [0] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/sql-update.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/sql-update.html [1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/sql-merge.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/sql-merge.html

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]