Comment on How does this pic show that Elon Musk doesnt know SQL?
knightly@pawb.social 1 year ago
To oversimplify, there are two basic kinds of databases: SQL and noSQL (“Not Only SQL”).
SQL databases work as you’d imagine, with tables of rows and columns like a spreadsheet that are structured according to a fixed schema.
NoSQL includes all other forms of databases, document-based, graph-based, key-value pairs, etc.
The former are highly consistent and efficient at processing complicated queries or recording transactions, while the latter is flexible and fast at reads/writes but not neccessarily consistent.
All large orgs will have both types in use for different purposes; SQL is better for banking purposes where consistency is paramount, NoSQL better for real-time web apps that need minimal response times and scalable capacity.
Just so I’m clear, you’re implying that a given SSN could appear associated to multiple “keys” because the key-value pair in a NoSQL database could have complex data.
An example I can imagine is a widow collecting her dead husband’s Social Security. Her SSN could appear in her own entry and also in her dead husband’s as a payee of that benefit, thus appearing as a “duplicate” SSN.
Is that in line with what you’re saying?
Indeed, that’s a possibility, but I’m not privy to the structure of the social security administration’s databases so I couldn’t say if it was indeed the case.
Thats how I feel too.
Lol, I’d love to see the data hes trying to speak about (not that that’d be any kind of concerning for privacy /s). I don’t think he’s outright lying, but it definitely feels like a misrepresentation / wrong conclusion from the data.
But thanks for your part in helping me understand all this!
schteph@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I didn’t read it like that. What I take from it is that he’s implying that the government uses something much stupider than sql, like Lotus1-2-3 or plain txt files or excel. I really wouldn’t be surprised that there’s some government department that had their IT done during the first Bush administration and didn’t really upgrade from it since.
There are also probably some departments that don’t get much funding, so they organise part of their work into some shared excel files.l
Nothing really wrong with that. Unless he’s implying that the entire federal government works like that, which is preposterously stupid.
knightly@pawb.social 1 year ago
Seems to me that the most generous interpretation would be the preponderance of Oracle’s DBs in the government, and Musk being pedantic since they aren’t literally called SQL like MySQL, MSSQL, or PostgreSQL (even though they all fall into that category).