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.

  • turtle [he/him]@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    7 days ago

    That all makes sense, except if someone’s SSN changes (which happens under certain circumstances), doesn’t that invalidate their primary key or require a much more complicated operation of issuing a new record and relinking all the existing relationships?

    I can imagine an SSN existing in more than one primary key due to errors. If they use SSNs in the primary key at all, but combined with something else, that leads me to believe that the designers felt that SSNs were reliable for being a pure primary key.

    I agree with you about Occam’s Razor. The guy has demonstrated multiple times that he’s a dishonest moron.

    • DahGangalang@infosec.pubOP
      3·
      7 days ago

      I’m not familiar with cases where someone’s SSN could change. Could you link to resources on when that would happen?

      • turtle [he/him]@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        I don’t have any resources handy, but I do know someone who this happened to: they were an immigrant who got an SSN the first time they migrated to the US, went back to live in their country for a number of years, then returned to the US and I guess applied for an SSN again. Voilá, two SSNs and a mess.

        • DahGangalang@infosec.pubOP
          3·
          7 days ago

          Yeah, I can imagine thats be an administrative headache. I do not envy them the opportunity of sorting that out.

          Thanks for the example though. That makes sense.

    • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      That all makes sense, except if someone’s SSN changes (which happens under certain circumstances), doesn’t that invalidate their primary key or require a much more complicated operation of issuing a new record and relinking all the existing relationships?

      Yes, in the case of duplicate SSN assignments for two people (rare) l you would need to change their records to align with the new SSN while not changing the records that go the the person who keeps the SSN. We do it with state identifiers and it is a gigantic pain in the ass.

      If two numbers are assigned to the same person merging them to one of the two is far easier.