• foo (unregistered)

    Replace(First)

  • (cs)

    2nd? But it doesnt seem really worth the effort...

  • (cs)
    /* HACK! Being SQL, there's no concept of RegEx, so we have to this horrible hack */
    Well they should have constructed the query in a proper language that has Regexes, then. ;)
  • Ton (unregistered)

    I don't really see this as such a terrible wtf... Apart from the devs not bothering to check with a database guy to see if there is some way to do this more elegantly (and even then, I'm willing to bet half of them wouldn't know about this 'accent insensitive' thing anyway).

  • Machtyn (unregistered)

    And this is exactly why I visit The Daily WTF. I try to learn from others' mistakes. Sometimes, the correct answer is given to us. (Not being a db programmer or an experienced programmer, I would have never known about trying the correct method.)

  • Me (unregistered)

    Isn't the "SELECT *" the real WTF?

  • JayC (unregistered) in reply to Me
    Me:
    Isn't the "SELECT *" the real WTF?

    He could have just replaced the column names with * to give emphasis to the fixed WHERE statement.

  • (cs)

    This sort of thing happens when you segregate your staff into separate teams with their own mascots.

  • et (unregistered)

    trwtf is that most DBMS's has RegEx support

  • Franky (unregistered)

    haha, those are the best ppl, hating something but not actually bothering to check their details first

    captcha: inhibeo - i hinder

  • JayC (unregistered) in reply to Ton
    Ton:
    I don't really see this as such a terrible wtf... Apart from the devs not bothering to check with a database guy to see if there is some way to do this more elegantly (and even then, I'm willing to bet half of them wouldn't know about this 'accent insensitive' thing anyway).

    I'm willing to bet half of self professed "database guys" don't know a thing about collations.

  • (cs)

    Collation... is that some kind of meal?

  • Oded (unregistered)
    /* HACK AGAIN! Oh yeah, no cod reuse. Why are we doing this in SQL!? */
    I do try to reuse my fish, whenever possible.
  • Wing (unregistered)

    Wow... not only is the shorter code easier on the eyes/mind/support/etc... it will actually be cacheable vs the function riddled version. I'm sure performance saw a serious uptick. WTH!?

  • balrogbeard (unregistered)

    So why were they stripping spaces? The fixed version doesn't replicate that behaviour.

  • TheManWho (unregistered)

    There's something fishy going on in the second part of that where clause.

  • benmurphyx (unregistered) in reply to TheManWho

    These people always flounder around for a solution

  • Tom (unregistered)

    /* HACK! Not being first, I have to this horrible hack */

    Frist!

  • (cs)

    Nobody knows everything, least of all beginners, so I can understand not knowing that the "unusual" characters are effectively translated-down when using "like" (I didn't realize that either).

    Not knowing enough to ask if there's a better way than what they came up with, which looks sufficiently complicated that there just has to be a better way, is unforgivable in this day and age.

  • gizmore (unregistered)

    I wonder if it would transcript "Umlauts" like Ü to UE.

    abico: I am a wooden calculator.

  • (cs)

    And the comment about no cod(e) reuse, why not just make a function and calling that on the two fields???

    At least in postgresql you can do that.....

    CREATE FUNCTION foo(TEXT) RETURNS TEXT AS $$ DELARE retval TEXT; BEGIN ... Do work here ... RETURN retval END $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

    and then SELECT * FROM tab1 WHERE foo(field1) LIKE ? OR foo(field2) LIKE ?

    Yours Yazeran

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Nobody knows everything, least of all beginners, so I can understand not knowing that the "unusual" characters are effectively translated-down when using "like" (I didn't realize that either).
    They aren't. That's what the "collate" modifiers do.
  • Bob (unregistered)

    Anyone who thinks regexs are a solution to character set issues deserves a good shooting. I can understand not knowing the answer, but thinking regex is the solution is insane.

    Yes, I know: Anyone who thinks regexs are a solution deserves a good shooting. FTFY.

  • wonk (unregistered)

    Clearly, they should have created their own RegEx function in CLR. That way, they would have lots more WTfs.

  • Richard (unregistered)

    Neither query is SARGable [1]; any index on the name or surname columns will be ignored. As the table grows, the query will get slower, which will no doubt be the fault of the database, and used as an argument to go NoSQL [2].

    The simple solution is to change the collation on the name columns and drop the "collate ..." clauses from the query.

    If that won't work for some reason, use a computed column with the correct collation instead. [3]

    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargable [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL [3] http://www.sqlteam.com/article/using-indexed-computed-columns-to-improve-performance

  • (cs)

    Not even sure if that originel query working condition!

  • (cs)

    Normally when I am interacting with databases I am doing it in code so I normally let my code handle replacing or converting special characters. Also isn't regex supposed to be used for finding strings not switch case style replacing?

    Also the comment about database "Being SQL, there's no concept of RegEx" aggravates me. Did they even try to use google? Oracle and MySQL have regex support and I am sure most other languages have it to.

  • Capt. Obvious (unregistered)

    The problem is building the clarified names each time. There should just be one column for "English names" that are stored without accents. That's the WTF, right?

  • (cs) in reply to Anketam
    Anketam:
    Normally when I am interacting with databases I am doing it in code so I normally let my code handle replacing or converting special characters. Also isn't regex supposed to be used for finding strings not switch case style replacing?

    Also the comment about database "Being SQL, there's no concept of RegEx" aggravates me. Did they even try to use google? Oracle and MySQL have regex support and I am sure most other languages have it to.

    That is surly some joke.

  • Simon (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    Anyone who thinks regexs are a solution to character set issues deserves a good shooting. I can understand not knowing the answer, but thinking regex is the solution is insane.

    Yes, I know: Anyone who thinks regexs are a solution deserves a good shooting. FTFY.

    Yup... the good old "two problems" solution....

  • Yousef (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Nobody knows everything, least of all beginners, so I can understand not knowing that the "unusual" characters are effectively translated-down when using "like" (I didn't realize that either).

    Not knowing enough to ask if there's a better way than what they came up with, which looks sufficienly complicated that there just has to be a better way, is unforgivable in this day and age.

    More to the point, bagging the hell out of the language in the comments when you are too fresh to know better is a tad silly...

    Never, ever post comments about how inflexible/useless a language is unless you are absolutely certain that it's true...

    Just because you don't know a better way, doesn't mean it's a crap language.

  • fisherman (unregistered) in reply to benmurphyx
    benmurphyx:
    These people always flounder around for a solution
    Looks like we not be gettin many bite today...
  • (cs) in reply to Anketam
    Anketam:
    Did they even try to use google?
    Of course not; that would get in the way of their senseless ranting.
  • Robbert (unregistered)

    I don't think this is very wtf-worthy. If I hadn't accidentally used a accent-insensitive primary key in a project that had both an accented and non-accented version of the same primary key I would have never found out about this feature (until now of course, that's why TDWTF is awesome).

  • (cs) in reply to fisherman
    fisherman:
    benmurphyx:
    These people always flounder around for a solution
    Looks like we not be gettin many bite today...
    If I were on the hook for this I would have been like a fish out of water.
  • Toon (unregistered)

    That's not even true! Some DBMS's have Regex, like MySQL. Anyway, my own two cents on the matter (as a non-university non-genius) is, that even though databases may simply be convenient ways to store data blobs, it's the retrieval that counts; let's say, for argument's sake, that you're a genius. Well then, it still saves time and therefore money, to go with a database system that you don't have to spend time and effort optimizing.

    I continue to find it awesome that you can ask the most intricate questions of a database; by changing a few words of an SQL query you can make changes that you might otherwise spend hours writing boilerplate code for.

    My friend once asked me what the point of using a database was. I'm no genius but after thinking about it (and learning a few things in the process), I explained to him that there's nothing wrong with a flat file if all you're going to store is one or two tables, and you have to fetch each row each time. But the second you want to upscale, or the instant you want to do a join, or the minute you need to find a particular row, then it's better to rely on the efforts of the experts that wrote a DBMS just for the purpose.

    It's a good thing to reflect on now and again IMO: why DO we bother with databases? Asking yourself basic questions is very good. It's a good thing to ponder the fundamentals. To try to really understand what you had merely intuited until that point.

  • (cs)

    Also, didcha notice that on the first version, if the user HAD used the accented characters in the search string, the lookup would have failed. (Not sure about the revised version - it might fail there too)

  • (cs) in reply to Simon
    Simon:
    Bob:
    Anyone who thinks regexs are a solution to character set issues deserves a good shooting. I can understand not knowing the answer, but thinking regex is the solution is insane.

    Yes, I know: Anyone who thinks regexs are a solution deserves a good shooting. FTFY.

    Yup... the good old "two problems" solution....

    Someone should have brought up the "two problems" thing at least 2 hours ago. What's wrong with you people?

  • Dolphin Hunter (unregistered) in reply to me_again
    me_again:
    fisherman:
    benmurphyx:
    These people always flounder around for a solution
    Looks like we not be gettin many bite today...
    If I were on the hook for this I would have been like a fish out of water.
                                     _.-~  )
                      _..--~~~~,'   ,-/     _
                   .-'. . . .'   ,-','    ,' )
                 ,'. . . _   ,--~,-'__..-'  ,'
               ,'. . .  (@)' ---~~~~      ,'
              /. . . . '~~             ,-'
             /. . . . .             ,-'
            ; . . . .  - .        ,'
           : . . . .       _     /
          . . . . .          `-.:
         . . . ./  - .          )
        .  . . |  _____..---.._/ _________
  ~---~~~~----~~~~             ~~
  • Jack (unregistered)
    Oh yeah, no cod reuse.
    What, copy-and-paste doesn't work in SQL?

    Maybe that's a good thing...

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle

    Snoofle, Its not like that is translating down. The query explicitly states the collation to use. So everything is effectivly converted and thus the accent is removed.

  • (cs) in reply to me_again
    me_again:
    fisherman:
    benmurphyx:
    These people always flounder around for a solution
    Looks like we not be gettin many bite today...
    If I were on the hook for this I would have been like a fish out of water.
    I would expect someone to carp about these puns.
  • Sheldon (unregistered)

    Every once in a while, when you find yourself thinking "I can't believe this is the right way to do it!" consider it a sign, that maybe this isn't the right way to do it.

  • Tom (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    Anyone who thinks regexs are a solution to character set issues deserves a good shooting. I can understand not knowing the answer, but thinking regex is the solution is insane.

    Yes, I know: Anyone who thinks regexs are a solution deserves a good shooting. FTFY.

    Programming... the only profession where shooting is sometimes a good thing... maybe even necessary as the only cure.

  • Crumb Mudgeon (unregistered)

    TRWTF is all those communist characters. If it isn't on your keyboard, it doesn't belong in the database dammit!

  • Simon (unregistered) in reply to Sheldon
    Sheldon:
    Every once in a while, when you find yourself thinking "I can't believe this is the right way to do it!" consider it a sign, that maybe this isn't the right way to do it.

    It would be nice if that were the case. But unfortunately, you then do extensive research before being forced to conclude that yes, the wrong way is the right way to do it.

  • Johnny come lately (unregistered) in reply to Dolphin Hunter
    Dolphin Hunter:
    me_again:
    fisherman:
    benmurphyx:
    These people always flounder around for a solution
    Looks like we not be gettin many bite today...
    If I were on the hook for this I would have been like a fish out of water.
                                     _.-~  )
                      _..--~~~~,'   ,-/     _
                   .-'. . . .'   ,-','    ,' )
                 ,'. . . _   ,--~,-'__..-'  ,'
               ,'. . .  (@)' ---~~~~      ,'
              /. . . . '~~             ,-'
             /. . . . .             ,-'
            ; . . . .  - .        ,'
           : . . . .       _     /
          . . . . .          `-.:
         . . . ./  - .          )
        .  . . |  _____..---.._/ _________
  ~---~~~~----~~~~             ~~</div></BLOCKQUOTE>A dolphin is not a fish.
  • Dermot (unregistered) in reply to Simon
    Simon:
    Sheldon:
    Every once in a while, when you find yourself thinking "I can't believe this is the right way to do it!" consider it a sign, that maybe this isn't the right way to do it.

    It would be nice if that were the case. But unfortunately, you then do extensive research before being forced to conclude that yes, the wrong way is the right way to do it.

    Hear! Hear!! Researching a better way is a waste of time. Just hack it together godammit....

  • Buddy (unregistered)

    Oh yeah, we've had anti-DB people. I wouldn't be surprised if the code sample was from the same shop. One guy didn't trust databases to run queries, so he dumped everything to enormous files and ran his homemade C utilities on them. When I showed him how much easier and faster it is to do queries in SQL, he would point out the differences in the results as evidence that "SQL wasn't working right". When I countered that it was because NULLs weren't being handled properly in his C utilities, e.g. atoi("0") == atoi("NULL"), he said "That's okay, the errors aren't significant." What do you say to someone so refractorily obtuse? At the time, I think I was going through two-fifths of vodka a week.

  • DavidTC (unregistered)

    Erm, let's assume I don't know anything about collation...why the hell would I use SQL functions? Hell, the code itself asks why they're doing it in SQL. You do the replacement outside the SQL, and pass that variable in. Uh...duh?

    Also, in what universe would this want or need a regexp? Why the fuck would you replace single characters using a regexp?

    To replace characters, you use something like php's strtr. I'm sure most languages have something like this. In fact, there's a example of stripping accents in the PHP documentation for that function:

    $txt = strtr($txt, "\xe1\xc1\xe0\xc0\xe2\xc2\xe4\xc4\xe3\xc3\xe5\xc5". "\xaa\xe7\xc7\xe9\xc9\xe8\xc8\xea\xca\xeb\xcb\xed". "\xcd\xec\xcc\xee\xce\xef\xcf\xf1\xd1\xf3\xd3\xf2". "\xd2\xf4\xd4\xf6\xd6\xf5\xd5\x8\xd8\xba\xf0\xfa\xda". "\xf9\xd9\xfb\xdb\xfc\xdc\xfd\xdd\xff\xe6\xc6\xdf\xf8", "aAaAaAaAaAaAacCeEeEeEeEiIiIiIiInNo". "OoOoOoOoOoOoouUuUuUuUyYyaAso");

    Wow, it's rocket science.

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