I inherited a massive data collection routine which I identified as a good candidate for threading. When I mentioned the idea to the original duhveloper his eyes just kinda glazed over. The objection was that the routine has always "worked" so why introduce risk with increased complexity? After he left I jumped in and multi-threaded it. I was able to thread 20 already busy servers all working for me at the same time and each server was threading stuff without any performance degredation. Normal 24/7 operations with many concurrent production sessions were not impacted in the least. The end result was that the former 22 hour long process now completes in 22 to 41 minutes and it's much more stable and reliable. And with a good thread pool class it really wasn't that complicated. Actually, the hardest thing was getting beyond the glazed eyed reservations of a clueless duhveloper who was too timorous to try something "new."
Said one professor to another upon seeing his messy desk, "A cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind."
In retort, while looking down upon his collegue's bare desktop, "Ah yes, but it's better than an empty desk."
For me, clutter is a function of being busy and not so much a matter of disorganization. Eventually, when I have "nothing better to do" I clean up the mess. When I see someone who always has an immaculate desk I think, "Now there's a bureaucrat who doesn't have much important work to do." When I see a techy with a messy desk I think, "Now there's someone who's busy because he's doing stuff that matters." And for those whose desk I've never seen I think, "This person may be busy but mostly they're just a slob."
Life is like a trapese act... It's a matter of maintaining balance or taking a fall.
Without sophisticated equipment simple observation indicates recent geologic change. The Southern fingers of Lake Yellowstone are flooding their banks and drowning trees as the entire Southern flank is tilting down while the bulge in the center of the lake is pushing upward. I have a favorite off trail place down there where I take a cup and a tea bag. Really cool... Er uh, HOT.
I live in Bozeman, MT just North of Yellowstone and I haven't felt anything... And whenever it erupts I hope that, because I live so close, I still won't feel a thing, if you get my drift.
It sounds like we're saying, "We can put more lipstick on our pig than you can on yours."
Underneath all the lipstick there's still a pig... But our *nix pig is prettier than your windoze pig.
What theologians and scientists have in common...
on
Dark Matter Exists
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· Score: 1
Theologians and scientists have much in common... They spend a great deal of time and energy trying to explain the unseen.
They argue amongst their ranks about who is dogmatic and who is objective. They also argue about that which is seen and what it means. Eventually interpretation becomes more essential than observation.
We're just like so many grasshoppers which can perceive the moon but don't know exactly what it is or what it really "means."
Wisdom begins with the realization of how puny one is in the universe. "A man's got to know his limitations"
Clint
/. is math notation for divide and multiply
on
Divine Proportions
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· Score: 1
What's all this math? I thought/. was a reference to *nix stuff.
This thread is old and boring now... I need a new, more interesting topic.
Re:Wireless works great and is constantly improvin
on
Own the Last Mile
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· Score: 1
Well I live in hilly, tree country too but it can be done. Where there's a will there's a way. The first time I tried for wireless I was in a hill shadow behind a tower only 2 miles away. Now there are lots of towers. I've gone looking for them and have had a hard time seeing them as they are discreetly placed. There are some houses strategically located on a ridge with a view to town. Before the commercial wireless solution became available I was thinking about establishing a T1 in town and approaching a neighbor to create a network of community access point. If someone is not very community minded they could be enticed with free broadband. Even in metropolitan areas antenae can be discreetly placed on house tops. The day is coming when there will be no wire and very little fiber to the home. It's mostly a matter of will and politics not technological constraints.
Wireless works great and is constantly improving.
on
Own the Last Mile
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· Score: 1
If wireless works then it seems kinda dumb to be digging up earth and laying cable all over the place. Wireless works quite well for me thank you very much. I live in rural Montana outside of town. There is no DSL or cable where I live so I get 125Mb wireless from a tower 20 miles away. The service is great with an always on static IP and the cost is reasonable for our area. Before this my only alternative was dial up and it sucked. I have a Linux SysAdmin/DBA job in town and am on-call for supporting computers spread around 3 continents. Even without GUI stuff dialup to the VPN sucked so sometimes I'd just drive into town. Now I connect via broadband and I'm a happy camper in the country. C'mon G3. We need more energy spent on improving wireless and making it ubiquitous. The last thing we need is political interference.
In this particular case it was a one time deal and the key values were guaranteed not to change. Another technique would be to add a column to the table called sortval or something, then change the ORDER BY clause to ORDER BY sortval, keyval, blah, blah, blah
There's no reason not to implement an association table is there? It's true that some transactions may require you to update 2 tables instead of one but the "alternative" of having one column contain one or more delimited values is bad form requiring you to manipulate data outside the database engine. To make things easy you can use triggers to do things like cascade deletes on association tables, etc. Of course using triggers raises RDBMS portability issues.
There is sometimes a bit of art to data modeling but generally recognized best practices are a safe bet and 3rd normal form usually does the trick.
There's a bigger CRAP
on
The Art of SQL
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Regarding > "there's a bigger gap between what the code says and what the code does."
I think that's a typo. It should read...
there's bigger CRAP between what the code says and what the code does.
There's a lot of code in the RDBMS and normally you shouldn't have to delve into the RDBMS' source... But you should know what it does and how to use it.
I was once on a project where a DUHveloper needed to perform an unnatural sort on a key column. He needed to display the query results where certain rows always needed to be sorted to the end of the result set but there were no column values to meet the criteria. He had this HUGE amount of nested if statements that he had been working on for days. After I inquired as to what he was wasting all of his time on I showed him how to create a sort non-displayed column where you derive a value based on a CASE statement. I accomplished in 5 minutes what he had struggled for days on just because he didn't really know much about SQL.
I've corresponed with Mr. Faroult on several occasions, I've used many of his scripts, and I've received a lot of email help from him... So based on my experience I'm betting his book is pretty good.
Re:Bummer, trees
on
The Art of SQL
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· Score: 3, Insightful
You ARE just being facetious right?
Tree structures are everywhere in computing... Like file systems... Like the DOM for every web page you have ever looked at is represented by a tree structure.
As regards the coverage of M:M... Another post pointed out that it IS covered in the book.
As regards the usage of M:M... That's just for high level conceptual modeling right? Surely you are not actually going to implement that way but will instead insert an intersect object AKA associative table, right? Database Programming 101 thorough covers this topic.
Not only do DUHvelopers need to stop thinking of the RDBMS as just a bucket to hold stuff, they desperately need to be know SQL and aspire to database programming beyond cutting more code. And even more significantly, they need to understand the importance of a good ERD so they don't fall into the trap of trying to implement a M:M.
Oracle is too busy buying competitors and fusing disparate technologies together to be bothered with unexciting stuff like security patches. Hiring entry level developers and making them do patches is a good way for them to learn the Oracle.;-)
Good points but it's mere speculation without an accepted scientific paper to back it up. I have seen studies speculating that increased water vapor would be climatically and environmentally catastrophic. We're not talking about "greenhouse gas water vapor," we're talking about greenhouse warming with an escalating effect where more warming means more water vapor remains in the atmosphere which means more warming to the point of no return. I don't see the Venusian atmosphere cooling down anytime soon.
Problem 1: people failed to consider the consequences of the success of the internal combustion engine and its attendant emissions.
Problem 2: people failed to consider the consequences of the success of the fuel cell powered engine and its attendant emissions.
Root cause: people are shortsighted.
I have yet to see any scientific study on the impacts of large scale water vapor emissions caused by wide usage of fuel cells. Those advocating fuel cells as a solution to global environmental issues need to address the water vapor issue otherwise they are repeating mankind's historical tendency of being shortsighted. Condensing the vapor and producing clean water could be a good thing. But we need the missing scientific study on the potential impact of excessive water vapor emissions and what it would take to control those emissions.
In the name of "saving the environment" I envision hundreds of millions of vehicles powered by fuel cells emitting tons of water vapor in exchange for hydrocarbon pollutants. The problem is that water vapor has a huge greenhouse effect-- Just look at Venus and its heat which is incompatible with human life. So catastrophic climate changes and the end of mankind is brought about by excessive water vapor emmissions.
Save the world... Drive a big SUV which is powered by less toxic liquified dinosaur juice and can carry 8 passengers and thus is more efficient since it has a higher miles per gallon per passenger ratio.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm interested in this too. I provide support for a church that's 2 miles from my house and would like to offer free services to the community.
Oh, I left out that it must be powered by a fuel cell only needing to be recharged twice per year.
This is not a wish list but a need list:
I have some practical experience on this one.
I inherited a massive data collection routine which I identified as a good candidate for threading. When I mentioned the idea to the original duhveloper his eyes just kinda glazed over. The objection was that the routine has always "worked" so why introduce risk with increased complexity? After he left I jumped in and multi-threaded it. I was able to thread 20 already busy servers all working for me at the same time and each server was threading stuff without any performance degredation. Normal 24/7 operations with many concurrent production sessions were not impacted in the least. The end result was that the former 22 hour long process now completes in 22 to 41 minutes and it's much more stable and reliable. And with a good thread pool class it really wasn't that complicated. Actually, the hardest thing was getting beyond the glazed eyed reservations of a clueless duhveloper who was too timorous to try something "new."
Said one professor to another upon seeing his messy desk, "A cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind."
In retort, while looking down upon his collegue's bare desktop, "Ah yes, but it's better than an empty desk."
For me, clutter is a function of being busy and not so much a matter of disorganization. Eventually, when I have "nothing better to do" I clean up the mess. When I see someone who always has an immaculate desk I think, "Now there's a bureaucrat who doesn't have much important work to do." When I see a techy with a messy desk I think, "Now there's someone who's busy because he's doing stuff that matters." And for those whose desk I've never seen I think, "This person may be busy but mostly they're just a slob."
Life is like a trapese act... It's a matter of maintaining balance or taking a fall.
me
Without sophisticated equipment simple observation indicates recent geologic change. The Southern fingers of Lake Yellowstone are flooding their banks and drowning trees as the entire Southern flank is tilting down while the bulge in the center of the lake is pushing upward. I have a favorite off trail place down there where I take a cup and a tea bag. Really cool... Er uh, HOT.
I live in Bozeman, MT just North of Yellowstone and I haven't felt anything... And whenever it erupts I hope that, because I live so close, I still won't feel a thing, if you get my drift.
Here's a GREAT example of a multithreaded app... MySQL. Well done MySQL development team!!
Since escaping the Slick-On Valley rat race and moving to Montana I've felt much younger. I feel sorry for all those rats I left behind.
It sounds like we're saying, "We can put more lipstick on our pig than you can on yours."
Underneath all the lipstick there's still a pig... But our *nix pig is prettier than your windoze pig.
Theologians and scientists have much in common... They spend a great deal of time and energy trying to explain the unseen.
They argue amongst their ranks about who is dogmatic and who is objective. They also argue about that which is seen and what it means. Eventually interpretation becomes more essential than observation.
We're just like so many grasshoppers which can perceive the moon but don't know exactly what it is or what it really "means."
Wisdom begins with the realization of how puny one is in the universe. "A man's got to know his limitations"
Clint
What's all this math? I thought /. was a reference to *nix stuff.
And 20% of the /. market.
This thread is old and boring now... I need a new, more interesting topic.
Well I live in hilly, tree country too but it can be done. Where there's a will there's a way. The first time I tried for wireless I was in a hill shadow behind a tower only 2 miles away. Now there are lots of towers. I've gone looking for them and have had a hard time seeing them as they are discreetly placed. There are some houses strategically located on a ridge with a view to town. Before the commercial wireless solution became available I was thinking about establishing a T1 in town and approaching a neighbor to create a network of community access point. If someone is not very community minded they could be enticed with free broadband. Even in metropolitan areas antenae can be discreetly placed on house tops. The day is coming when there will be no wire and very little fiber to the home. It's mostly a matter of will and politics not technological constraints.
If wireless works then it seems kinda dumb to be digging up earth and laying cable all over the place. Wireless works quite well for me thank you very much. I live in rural Montana outside of town. There is no DSL or cable where I live so I get 125Mb wireless from a tower 20 miles away. The service is great with an always on static IP and the cost is reasonable for our area. Before this my only alternative was dial up and it sucked. I have a Linux SysAdmin/DBA job in town and am on-call for supporting computers spread around 3 continents. Even without GUI stuff dialup to the VPN sucked so sometimes I'd just drive into town. Now I connect via broadband and I'm a happy camper in the country. C'mon G3. We need more energy spent on improving wireless and making it ubiquitous. The last thing we need is political interference.
May all your problems be only technical.
In this particular case it was a one time deal and the key values were guaranteed not to change. Another technique would be to add a column to the table called sortval or something, then change the ORDER BY clause to ORDER BY sortval, keyval, blah, blah, blah
There's no reason not to implement an association table is there? It's true that some transactions may require you to update 2 tables instead of one but the "alternative" of having one column contain one or more delimited values is bad form requiring you to manipulate data outside the database engine. To make things easy you can use triggers to do things like cascade deletes on association tables, etc. Of course using triggers raises RDBMS portability issues.
There is sometimes a bit of art to data modeling but generally recognized best practices are a safe bet and 3rd normal form usually does the trick.
Regarding > "there's a bigger gap between what the code says and what the code does." I think that's a typo. It should read...
there's bigger CRAP between what the code says and what the code does.
There's a lot of code in the RDBMS and normally you shouldn't have to delve into the RDBMS' source... But you should know what it does and how to use it.
I was once on a project where a DUHveloper needed to perform an unnatural sort on a key column. He needed to display the query results where certain rows always needed to be sorted to the end of the result set but there were no column values to meet the criteria. He had this HUGE amount of nested if statements that he had been working on for days. After I inquired as to what he was wasting all of his time on I showed him how to create a sort non-displayed column where you derive a value based on a CASE statement. I accomplished in 5 minutes what he had struggled for days on just because he didn't really know much about SQL.
I've corresponed with Mr. Faroult on several occasions, I've used many of his scripts, and I've received a lot of email help from him... So based on my experience I'm betting his book is pretty good.
You ARE just being facetious right?
Tree structures are everywhere in computing... Like file systems... Like the DOM for every web page you have ever looked at is represented by a tree structure.
As regards the coverage of M:M... Another post pointed out that it IS covered in the book.
As regards the usage of M:M... That's just for high level conceptual modeling right? Surely you are not actually going to implement that way but will instead insert an intersect object AKA associative table, right? Database Programming 101 thorough covers this topic.
Not only do DUH velopers need to stop thinking of the RDBMS as just a bucket to hold stuff, they desperately need to be know SQL and aspire to database programming beyond cutting more code. And even more significantly, they need to understand the importance of a good ERD so they don't fall into the trap of trying to implement a M:M.
Oracle is too busy buying competitors and fusing disparate technologies together to be bothered with unexciting stuff like security patches. Hiring entry level developers and making them do patches is a good way for them to learn the Oracle. ;-)
When you inhaled water, filled up your lungs, drowned and died because your submarine ran out of gas.
Good points but it's mere speculation without an accepted scientific paper to back it up. I have seen studies speculating that increased water vapor would be climatically and environmentally catastrophic. We're not talking about "greenhouse gas water vapor," we're talking about greenhouse warming with an escalating effect where more warming means more water vapor remains in the atmosphere which means more warming to the point of no return. I don't see the Venusian atmosphere cooling down anytime soon.
Problem 1: people failed to consider the consequences of the success of the internal combustion engine and its attendant emissions.
Problem 2: people failed to consider the consequences of the success of the fuel cell powered engine and its attendant emissions.
Root cause: people are shortsighted.
I have yet to see any scientific study on the impacts of large scale water vapor emissions caused by wide usage of fuel cells. Those advocating fuel cells as a solution to global environmental issues need to address the water vapor issue otherwise they are repeating mankind's historical tendency of being shortsighted. Condensing the vapor and producing clean water could be a good thing. But we need the missing scientific study on the potential impact of excessive water vapor emissions and what it would take to control those emissions.
In the name of "saving the environment" I envision hundreds of millions of vehicles powered by fuel cells emitting tons of water vapor in exchange for hydrocarbon pollutants. The problem is that water vapor has a huge greenhouse effect-- Just look at Venus and its heat which is incompatible with human life. So catastrophic climate changes and the end of mankind is brought about by excessive water vapor emmissions.
Save the world... Drive a big SUV which is powered by less toxic liquified dinosaur juice and can carry 8 passengers and thus is more efficient since it has a higher miles per gallon per passenger ratio.