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From: Orchid XP v7
Subject: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 11:58:29
Message: <47d17435$1@news.povray.org>
OK, so this afternoon I did an SQL test. I warned them that I haven't 
done any SQL for about 5 years and that I'm probably a bit rusty. OTOH, 
I was expecting it to be, like, *hard*? All they asked for was some 
pretty basic stuff like "find all pages that have been visited by 
Googlebot more than 5 times" and so forth. Pretty trivial SELECT statements.

[One required a union, several required grouping and aggregates. And I 
got tripped over by all the ones that want fuzzy text matching - I don't 
remember all that stuff any more.]

The last three completely stumped me. One wanted me to take some data 
from one table and insert it into another one. I know how that's done, I 
just don't remember the command syntax off the top of my head. Another 
wanted me to use "cursors" - something I've never ever done before. I 
don't even know what one *is*.

The final one was quite an interesting problem though... I'm wondering 
if anybody has a solution.

Given a table containing all the page hits, count how many visits the 
website has had. (Two hits are the same "visit" if they're the same 
username and happen within 10 minutes of each other.)

I sat for ages puzzling over this one. I can't figure out how the heck 
to do it... any pointers?

PS. Apparently "I see plenty of people who claim to know SQL who do 
worse than you did. You're really underselling yourself, Andrew. I 
wasn't even expecting you to ATTEMPT those last few..."

PPS. First person who says 0x3A28213A gets a slap!

PPPS. http://www.xkcd.com/138/

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 12:09:48
Message: <47d176dc@news.povray.org>

> any pointers?

NULL.


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 12:13:36
Message: <47d177c0@news.povray.org>

> PS. Apparently "I see plenty of people who claim to know SQL who do 
> worse than you did. You're really underselling yourself, Andrew. I 
> wasn't even expecting you to ATTEMPT those last few..."

Remember that "unskilled and unaware of it" paper? The more you know, 
the more you know you don't know too (does that make any sense?). People 
may call themselves experts and not know what a JOIN is, and you say 
you're somewhat rusty because you know about lots of features that exist 
but you don't know very well, when you're actually much better than the 
idiot calling himself an expert.

Does that make any sense either? Seems it's impossible to explain this 
without long tricky sentences :)


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 12:17:31
Message: <47d178ab$1@news.povray.org>
On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:58:58 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> First person who says 0x3A28213A gets a slap!

LOL, you've got to know it's 0x3A28213B! ;)

Jim


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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 12:20:04
Message: <47d17944$1@news.povray.org>
Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

>> any pointers?
> 
> NULL.

If you give a person a NULL pointer, does that kill them?


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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 12:22:21
Message: <47d179cd$1@news.povray.org>
Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:58:58 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> 
>> First person who says 0x3A28213A gets a slap!
> 
> LOL, you've got to know it's 0x3A28213B! ;)

Neither, The alignment's all wrong on a 32-bit machine... it should be 
0x3A28213C


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From: Nicolas Alvarez
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 12:27:23
Message: <47d17afb@news.povray.org>

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:58:58 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>>
>>> First person who says 0x3A28213A gets a slap!
>>
>> LOL, you've got to know it's 0x3A28213B! ;)
> 
> Neither, The alignment's all wrong on a 32-bit machine... it should be 
> 0x3A28213C

Andrew, I think your warning not to give "that kind of pointers" has 
backfired badly.


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 12:49:25
Message: <47d18025$1@news.povray.org>
On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:17:03 -0600, Mike Raiford wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:58:58 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> 
>>> First person who says 0x3A28213A gets a slap!
>> 
>> LOL, you've got to know it's 0x3A28213B! ;)
> 
> Neither, The alignment's all wrong on a 32-bit machine... it should be
> 0x3A28213C

Oh, right, I forgot to carry the 1. ;-)

Jim


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From: Orchid XP v7
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 13:04:24
Message: <47d183a8$1@news.povray.org>
Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Andrew, I think your warning not to give "that kind of pointers" has 
> backfired badly.

...apparently. *rolls eyes*

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Tom Austin
Subject: Re: SQL help
Date: 7 Mar 2008 13:17:59
Message: <47d186d7$1@news.povray.org>
Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

>> PS. Apparently "I see plenty of people who claim to know SQL who do 
>> worse than you did. You're really underselling yourself, Andrew. I 
>> wasn't even expecting you to ATTEMPT those last few..."
> 
> Remember that "unskilled and unaware of it" paper? The more you know, 
> the more you know you don't know too (does that make any sense?). People 
> may call themselves experts and not know what a JOIN is, and you say 
> you're somewhat rusty because you know about lots of features that exist 
> but you don't know very well, when you're actually much better than the 
> idiot calling himself an expert.
> 
> Does that make any sense either? Seems it's impossible to explain this 
> without long tricky sentences :)


Knowing what thou knowest not...
In in a sense...
Omniscience


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