Comments on: Bad Advice

By: Shrinking Is A Popular Topic | SQL Server Blog - StraightPath Solutions

Shrinking Is A Popular Topic | SQL Server Blog - StraightPath Solutions — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:44:02 +0000

[...] A large portion of the folks responding to questions in the newsgroups and forums are giving great advice. They are taking their own time to help guide you down the right path. That being said, there are at times pieces of bad advice that hopefully aren’t followed in production. I talked about this practice of doing before trying in an earlier post. Gail Shaw also recently posted about this same topic on her blog. [...]

By: X002548

X002548 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:10:47 +0000

ok then

Glad I didn’t get mentioned for bad advice

Great Stuff “Kim”

By: Travis Alltop

Travis Alltop — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:01:13 +0000

Sorry Gail, I was reading one of Kimberly Tripp’s blogs yesterday and had her name on the brain. My point is here is that the focus should not be on how a DBA should seek outside advice to do something, which leads them into getting into this type of bad situation. Rather, the focus should be on whether they should be doing it in the first place… Always think before seeking any advice that could risk your db integrity. “Should I even be doing this right now????”

By: Gail

Gail — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:09:51 +0000

Kimberly?

By: Travis Alltop

Travis Alltop — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:38:36 +0000

I couldn’t agree more Kimberly! Giving bad advice to someone, like your 2 exanples atate, is kind of like giving a blunt pocket knife to someone and telling them to go cut down the tree in their own front yard. Not only are they approaching this the wrong way with little fore-thought, but they could be causing all kinds of unseen trouble for the person that might axtually listen to bad advice like this, particularly if they had never done this before and just assumed the person that told them this actually knew what they were doing…. Things like this can ruin your rep as a DBA real fast as you say, and can actually get someone else fired over it toom which I think is even worse. But then again, after being in this business for almost twenty five years myself and knowing just how doggy-dog things can get in most IT shops, you would be surprised at how many times I have seen people purposely send people out on wild goose chases looking for left-handed monkey wrenches just to make them look like fools in front of their peers or superiors simply because they either didn’t personally like them or because they were really after their job. It’s rough out there people in a lot of IT shops and you have to take some responsibility upon yourself to ensure that you just don’t blinfly follow every piece of SQL advice you get, regardless of the “guru” it came from. A little common sense and research before acting upon “any” advice from a so called “expert” is the rule of the day in my opinion…..

By: The Rambling DBA: Jonathan Kehayias : Online Credibility, How to build it and how to lose it in an instant

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:57:51 +0000

[...] week Gail Shaw made a post about Bad Advice and the impact that it has on credibility of not only the person posting it, but also on the site [...]

By: Jack D Corbett

Jack D Corbett — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:32:58 +0000

I just read one where I person asked for a time bound trigger and someone suggested that they use WAITFOR in the trigger. AHHHHHHHH!

By: Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:01:10 +0000

HAHAHA, wow, I love the delete-LDF answer. I know the job market’s tough in some cities, and maybe they’re trying to sabotage somebody else in order to take their job! Heh.

By: Gail

Gail — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:34:14 +0000

It’s funny how several people can post about the same thing around the same time without any discussion first.

As for that second piece of ‘advice’ by the time I saw it, the OP had already replied with ‘Thanks, I’ll try that’. I do so hope they had a backup.

By: Mike Walsh

Mike Walsh — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:26:31 +0000

Here Here! This is the week of posting about doing silly things without testing first apparently.

Great post with excellent advice. Always strive to give good advice, stay silent if you don’t know. On the flip side, don’t take everything on the internets as gospel. Test it, try it and see what happens. If you don’t understand it, learn it before doing it.

I have seen plenty of examples about the first example but not the second. Scary