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.

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    Well, there’s not always a benefit to keeping historical data. Sometimes you only want the most up-to-date information in a particular table or database, so you’d just update the row (replace). It depends on the use case of a given table.

    in this case you would just overwrite the existing row, you wouldn’t use de-duplication because it would do the opposite of what you wanted in that case. Maybe even use historical backups or CoW to retain that kind of data.

    Elon believes that each row in a table should be unique based on the SSN only, so a given SSN should appear only once with the person’s name and details on it. Yes, it’s an extremely dumb idea, but he’s a famously stupid person.

    and naturally, he doesn’t know what the term “de-duplication” means. Definitionally, the actual identity of the person MUST be unique, otherwise you’re going to somehow return two rows, when you call one, which is functionally impossible given how a DB is designed.

    • valtia@lemmy.world
      1·
      4 days ago

      in this case you would just overwrite the existing row, you wouldn’t use de-duplication because it would do the opposite of what you wanted in that case.

      … That’s what I said, you’d just update the row, i.e. replace the existing data, i.e. overwrite what’s already there

      Definitionally, the actual identity of the person MUST be unique, otherwise you’re going to somehow return two rows, when you call one, which is functionally impossible given how a DB is designed.

      … I don’t think you understand how modern databases are designed

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        11·
        4 days ago

        … That’s what I said, you’d just update the row, i.e. replace the existing data, i.e. overwrite what’s already there

        u were talking about not keeping historical data, which is one of the proposed reasons you would have “duplicate” entries, i was just clarifying that.

        … I don’t think you understand how modern databases are designed

        it’s my understanding that when it comes to storing data that it shouldn’t be possible to have two independent stores of the exact same thing, in two separate places, you could have duplicate data entries, but that’s irrelevant to the discussion of de-duplication aside from data consolidation. Which i don’t imagine is an intended usecase for a DB. Considering that you literally already have one identical entry. Of course you could simply make it non identical, that goes without saying.

        Also, we’re talking about the DB used for the social security database, not fucking tigerbeetle.