I’m a tech interested guy. I’ve touched SQL once or twice, but wasn’t able to really make sense of it. That combined with not having a practical use leaves SQL as largely a black box in my mind (though I am somewhat familiar with technical concepts in databasing).

With that, I keep seeing [pic related] as proof that Elon Musk doesn’t understand SQL.

Can someone give me a technical explanation for how one would come to that conclusion? I’d love if you could pass technical documentation for that.

  • nednobbins@lemm.ee
    2·
    4 days ago

    Yeah. And the fix for that has nothing to do with “de-duping” as a database operation either.

    The main components would probably be:

    1. Decide on a new scheme (with more digits)
    2. Create a mapping from the old scheme to the new scheme. (that’s where existing duplicates would get removed)
    3. Let people use both during some transition period, after which the old one isn’t valid any more.
    4. Decide when you’re going to stop issuing old SSNs and only issue new ones to people born after some date.

    There’s a lot of complication in each of those steps but none of them are particularly dependant on “de-duped” databases.