Comment on How does this pic show that Elon Musk doesnt know SQL?
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 week agoThis is not what he is actively doing though. He isn’t trying to improve databases.
He is tearing down entire departments and agencies and using shit like this to justify it.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Sure but my point is, if it was the scenario you described, then Elon would be talking about the right kind of denormalization problem.
Denormalization due to multiple different storing their own copies if the same data, in different formats worse yet, would actually be the kind if problem he’s tweeting about.
As opposed to a composite key on one table which means him being an ultracrepidarian, as usual.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Musk canceled the support for the long running Common Educstion Data Standards (CEDS) which is an initiative to promote better database standards and normalization for the states to address this kind of thing.
It does not fucking matter if he is technically correct about one tiny detail because he is only using to to destroy, not to improve efficiency.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I mean it matters here, as it’s literally the topic being actively discussed by the person who literally asked, so obviously it matters to them lol
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The thing is, there are a large number of different reasons to store an SSN as a long int or a string depending on how it is used with the rest of the data. For a phone number, there can be a valid reason to store the area code separately to speed up data queries that narrow down by area code instead of all in one field and peeling it apart. There are also reasons to have additional, seemingly redundant, columns that can be used for optimizing searches or simplifying how queries are written.
A common one is that using 1 and 0 instead of Y an N is often faster for massively large dataset optimization, but isn’t as easily human readable.
There are complex reasons for choosing different approaches in a database, and the most important thing is generally consistency within the database. His point is meaningless without context beyond consistency, and the different government systems will have had different priorities, not to mention trying to update all of the databases to make them consistent is a MASSIVE fucking undertaking. And the systems can stay the way they are as long as they have APIs or other methods of transferring data that ARE normalized and consistent.
I have personally been working with reporting data to federal systems for 15 years as a semi knowledgeable technical person. This is what I do for a job. What he is saying is pointlessly small trivia used to justify tearing things down instead of improving them.