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  4. When an error just doesn't give you enough information

When an error just doesn't give you enough information

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databasequestionrubysql-servercom
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  • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

    This isn't a coding horror, yet. But I'm betting anything the poster of this little gem produces will be. Fresh from the depths of Q&A a difficult error message, and a serious question that really belongs in a programming hall of shame:

    i need to add a database to my application, and if i do this i it show me this error

    "connections to the sql server database files (.mdf) require sql server 2005 express or sql server 2005 express to be installed and running on the local computer.the current version of sql server express can be downlaoded in the following URL:
    http://www.go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=125883"

    What can i do?

    I just tried an experiment. I read this question to my wife - who is not particularly computer literate, she still thinks notepad is a brilliant word processor - to see if she could answer it. "Follow the link and install the software" was her response. I look forward to running any app this guy creates...

    Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

    B Offline
    B Offline
    BrainiacV
    wrote on last edited by
    #4

    Ha! The company I am currently at has employed some consultants to re-implement a process we developed so it could conform to their pre-existing reporting system. Every e-mail we received from them announced that they were putting their "Top (fill in the blank) person" on the task. They claim to be Oracle experts and we use SQL Server. I've worked in both worlds so I know there are differences, but after we sent them all our scripts for creating the database, stored procedures and processing, we got an angry e-mail back from them that our scripts did not work. They had run the scripts and had gotten this error message.

    Database not found

    Their "Top Database person" wanted us to explain what it meant.

    Psychosis at 10 Film at 11

    J S 2 Replies Last reply
    0
    • L Lost User

      Not everybody is a master of the obvious...

      "Dark the dark side is. Very dark..." - Yoda ---
      "Shut up, Yoda, and just make yourself another toast." - Obi Wan Kenobi

      F Offline
      F Offline
      Fabio Franco
      wrote on last edited by
      #5

      Agreed! I have the problem myself. Well, maybe not that obvious but I always seem to miss stuff right in front of me :(

      1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

        This isn't a coding horror, yet. But I'm betting anything the poster of this little gem produces will be. Fresh from the depths of Q&A a difficult error message, and a serious question that really belongs in a programming hall of shame:

        i need to add a database to my application, and if i do this i it show me this error

        "connections to the sql server database files (.mdf) require sql server 2005 express or sql server 2005 express to be installed and running on the local computer.the current version of sql server express can be downlaoded in the following URL:
        http://www.go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=125883"

        What can i do?

        I just tried an experiment. I read this question to my wife - who is not particularly computer literate, she still thinks notepad is a brilliant word processor - to see if she could answer it. "Follow the link and install the software" was her response. I look forward to running any app this guy creates...

        Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

        S Offline
        S Offline
        StM0n
        wrote on last edited by
        #6

        Real men don't read error-messages...

        OriginalGriff wrote:

        notepad is a brilliant word processor

        ... it is ;)

        (yes|no|maybe)*

        B B 2 Replies Last reply
        0
        • S StM0n

          Real men don't read error-messages...

          OriginalGriff wrote:

          notepad is a brilliant word processor

          ... it is ;)

          (yes|no|maybe)*

          B Offline
          B Offline
          BobJanova
          wrote on last edited by
          #7

          No it isn't. It won't let you set a light-on-dark colour scheme, and it doesn't respect Unix-style line ends. A (good) text editor to create simple HTML pages is a good word processor, though. (Or LaTeX if one is feeling academic.)

          L 1 Reply Last reply
          0
          • B BobJanova

            No it isn't. It won't let you set a light-on-dark colour scheme, and it doesn't respect Unix-style line ends. A (good) text editor to create simple HTML pages is a good word processor, though. (Or LaTeX if one is feeling academic.)

            L Offline
            L Offline
            Lutoslaw
            wrote on last edited by
            #8

            BobJanova wrote:

            LaTeX

            :thumbsup: ;P

            Greetings - Jacek

            1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • S StM0n

              Real men don't read error-messages...

              OriginalGriff wrote:

              notepad is a brilliant word processor

              ... it is ;)

              (yes|no|maybe)*

              B Offline
              B Offline
              BillW33
              wrote on last edited by
              #9

              s_mon wrote:

              Real men don't read error-messages...

              Apparently neither did the poster of that "little gem"! ;) :laugh:

              Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.

              1 Reply Last reply
              0
              • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                This isn't a coding horror, yet. But I'm betting anything the poster of this little gem produces will be. Fresh from the depths of Q&A a difficult error message, and a serious question that really belongs in a programming hall of shame:

                i need to add a database to my application, and if i do this i it show me this error

                "connections to the sql server database files (.mdf) require sql server 2005 express or sql server 2005 express to be installed and running on the local computer.the current version of sql server express can be downlaoded in the following URL:
                http://www.go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=125883"

                What can i do?

                I just tried an experiment. I read this question to my wife - who is not particularly computer literate, she still thinks notepad is a brilliant word processor - to see if she could answer it. "Follow the link and install the software" was her response. I look forward to running any app this guy creates...

                Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

                R Offline
                R Offline
                RobCroll
                wrote on last edited by
                #10

                That must have been some rogue Microsoft programmer who hard coded that. I can't believe that sort of meaningful message would have got through the globalization process.

                "You get that on the big jobs."

                OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
                0
                • R RobCroll

                  That must have been some rogue Microsoft programmer who hard coded that. I can't believe that sort of meaningful message would have got through the globalization process.

                  "You get that on the big jobs."

                  OriginalGriffO Offline
                  OriginalGriffO Offline
                  OriginalGriff
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #11

                  Cynic! Probably right, but cynical...:thumbsup:

                  Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

                  "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                  "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • B BrainiacV

                    Ha! The company I am currently at has employed some consultants to re-implement a process we developed so it could conform to their pre-existing reporting system. Every e-mail we received from them announced that they were putting their "Top (fill in the blank) person" on the task. They claim to be Oracle experts and we use SQL Server. I've worked in both worlds so I know there are differences, but after we sent them all our scripts for creating the database, stored procedures and processing, we got an angry e-mail back from them that our scripts did not work. They had run the scripts and had gotten this error message.

                    Database not found

                    Their "Top Database person" wanted us to explain what it meant.

                    Psychosis at 10 Film at 11

                    J Offline
                    J Offline
                    John R Shaw
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #12

                    :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Thanks for the laugh!

                    INTP "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra "I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone

                    1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                      This isn't a coding horror, yet. But I'm betting anything the poster of this little gem produces will be. Fresh from the depths of Q&A a difficult error message, and a serious question that really belongs in a programming hall of shame:

                      i need to add a database to my application, and if i do this i it show me this error

                      "connections to the sql server database files (.mdf) require sql server 2005 express or sql server 2005 express to be installed and running on the local computer.the current version of sql server express can be downlaoded in the following URL:
                      http://www.go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=125883"

                      What can i do?

                      I just tried an experiment. I read this question to my wife - who is not particularly computer literate, she still thinks notepad is a brilliant word processor - to see if she could answer it. "Follow the link and install the software" was her response. I look forward to running any app this guy creates...

                      Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

                      S Offline
                      S Offline
                      Schmuli
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #13

                      It should be noted that the URL does not appear to work! Anybody try following it and successfully got to a SQL Server download page? I know I couldn't, although it may be a local thing. Or maybe it is just such an old message that the link is not valid anymore? Also, notice how the message reads "require sql server 2005 express or sql server 2005 express", what's the difference between the two options?

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                        This isn't a coding horror, yet. But I'm betting anything the poster of this little gem produces will be. Fresh from the depths of Q&A a difficult error message, and a serious question that really belongs in a programming hall of shame:

                        i need to add a database to my application, and if i do this i it show me this error

                        "connections to the sql server database files (.mdf) require sql server 2005 express or sql server 2005 express to be installed and running on the local computer.the current version of sql server express can be downlaoded in the following URL:
                        http://www.go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=125883"

                        What can i do?

                        I just tried an experiment. I read this question to my wife - who is not particularly computer literate, she still thinks notepad is a brilliant word processor - to see if she could answer it. "Follow the link and install the software" was her response. I look forward to running any app this guy creates...

                        Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

                        Y Offline
                        Y Offline
                        YSLGuru
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #14

                        @OriginalGriff Just out of curiosity did you ask the guy if he was asking what his options are within installing SQL Server (or something like it) or if he actually was unclear about what the solution was? In a former job we had very tight security even on developers and you couldn't just install whatever you wanted, you had to get IT to do it or let you do it. Based on the wording of the question which I assume you copy & pasted into your post, indicates (to me) that English may not be his first language and so the communication barrier could add to the confusion. Just a thought.

                        OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • Y YSLGuru

                          @OriginalGriff Just out of curiosity did you ask the guy if he was asking what his options are within installing SQL Server (or something like it) or if he actually was unclear about what the solution was? In a former job we had very tight security even on developers and you couldn't just install whatever you wanted, you had to get IT to do it or let you do it. Based on the wording of the question which I assume you copy & pasted into your post, indicates (to me) that English may not be his first language and so the communication barrier could add to the confusion. Just a thought.

                          OriginalGriffO Offline
                          OriginalGriffO Offline
                          OriginalGriff
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #15

                          Nope - his profile says "student"

                          Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

                          "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                          "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • B BrainiacV

                            Ha! The company I am currently at has employed some consultants to re-implement a process we developed so it could conform to their pre-existing reporting system. Every e-mail we received from them announced that they were putting their "Top (fill in the blank) person" on the task. They claim to be Oracle experts and we use SQL Server. I've worked in both worlds so I know there are differences, but after we sent them all our scripts for creating the database, stored procedures and processing, we got an angry e-mail back from them that our scripts did not work. They had run the scripts and had gotten this error message.

                            Database not found

                            Their "Top Database person" wanted us to explain what it meant.

                            Psychosis at 10 Film at 11

                            S Offline
                            S Offline
                            S Douglas
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #16

                            BrainiacV wrote:

                            Oracle experts

                            Ah, there is the issue...I've had to deal with many of those types of experts. :((


                            Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.

                            B 1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • S S Douglas

                              BrainiacV wrote:

                              Oracle experts

                              Ah, there is the issue...I've had to deal with many of those types of experts. :((


                              Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.

                              B Offline
                              B Offline
                              BrainiacV
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #17

                              Yes, I've had to deal with my share of those as well, but in this instance I think it's a high school kid with a PC copy of Oracle 11. I've been trying to warn our VP that these are scam artists, but she met them in Vegas and their printouts looked marvelous. My feeling is that it should have stayed in Vegas. I must say most of the Oracle people I met were alright Joes, although it was obvious they had attended the training classes just two weeks ahead of us. My problem was more the management at my company getting the SQL religion and thinking all queries could be solved with a single SQL statement (then why did they make PL/SQL?). After that, the core DB engine could have been written by the A Team, I found their user interface was written by the F Troop. "Bad END statement" really meant "Label not found", I guess the END statement was found before the label, therefore it was at fault. I wrote better parsers in high school.

                              Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

                              S 1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • B BrainiacV

                                Yes, I've had to deal with my share of those as well, but in this instance I think it's a high school kid with a PC copy of Oracle 11. I've been trying to warn our VP that these are scam artists, but she met them in Vegas and their printouts looked marvelous. My feeling is that it should have stayed in Vegas. I must say most of the Oracle people I met were alright Joes, although it was obvious they had attended the training classes just two weeks ahead of us. My problem was more the management at my company getting the SQL religion and thinking all queries could be solved with a single SQL statement (then why did they make PL/SQL?). After that, the core DB engine could have been written by the A Team, I found their user interface was written by the F Troop. "Bad END statement" really meant "Label not found", I guess the END statement was found before the label, therefore it was at fault. I wrote better parsers in high school.

                                Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

                                S Offline
                                S Offline
                                S Douglas
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #18

                                I have to support some oracle systems, I think some consultants never saw a problem they couldn't solve without a cursor. Even if the table only contains a couple of rows, by design.


                                Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.

                                B 1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • S S Douglas

                                  I have to support some oracle systems, I think some consultants never saw a problem they couldn't solve without a cursor. Even if the table only contains a couple of rows, by design.


                                  Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.

                                  B Offline
                                  B Offline
                                  BrainiacV
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #19

                                  My assignment at the time was match up binders to loose leaf contents. It was easiest if manufacturing knew how many binders to make with the content already in them. So I had three result piles, binders only, content only, combined binder and content. Now do that in a single SQL statement. (That's not really a challenge, I'm sure someone could do it.) I was fresh off their two weeks of Oracle SQL training at the time. I knew it was going to be bad when I sat down at the conference table and the team lead turned to me and asked me why I was there. I was the programmer assigned to do this? OK, you can stay. So 50 minutes into the discussion of the project, the Oracle lead consultant (the one being billed at $300/hour instead of the minion $100/hour) pops in, gets a synopsis, and declares, "this shouldn't take more than two weeks," and leaves for the next meeting he is already late for. I spent the first week staring at the problem, going around to the supposed Oracle experts, telling them the objective, and hearing them say, "That's an interesting problem, I'll give it some thought." So in the end, I said, screw it, I'm going to do it the old COBOL card-in, card-out way. I created two cursors (this being the mid-90's and cursors were cool) selected the data and sorted on a common column, and walked the two lists comparing them, creating a new record for each of the three bins. In the meantime, my project partner, the one too busy to help with the programming, he was just there to "liaise" with the project principles, came by after two weeks asking where the output was. I said, "Did you hear me say it was going to take two weeks?" I had protested at the meeting, but the BIG BRAIN had spoken with his estimate and that was it. I handed it in a couple days later, but 80% Rob, as we called him (he would do only 80% of the work, declare victory and move on) threw me under the bus by handing in only two of the three files I gave him. This ended with a stakeholder in the project coming to my cubicle and telling me what a slipshod job I had done. Twenty minutes later of making an accidental enemy had me finally realizing what had happened. When confronted about this, 80% Rob said, "Somebody dropped the ball."

                                  Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

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