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.

  • @[email protected]
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    241 month ago

    He is saying the US government doesn’t use structured databases.

    At least 90% of all databases have a structure.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      21 month ago

      Yeah, obviously ol’ boy is tripping if he thinks SQL isn’t used in the government.

      Big thing I’m prying at is whether there would be a legitimate purpose to have duplicated SSNs in the database (thus showing the First Bro doesn’t understand how SQL works).

      • Sparking
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        61 month ago

        As someone explained in another comment, you often duplicate information due to rules around cardinality to gain improvements in retrieval an. structure. I would be pretty worried if SSSNs were being used as a a widepread primary key in any set of tables - those should generally be UUIDs that can be optimized for gashing while avoiding collisions.

        Even if we are being generous to Elon, we could assume that social security payments are processed on mainframes given how many have to go out and the legacy nature of the program. Most mainframe shops I know have adapted an SQL interface for records in some capacity, but who knows what he is looking at.

        Government federal IT is done at a per agency basis. I would say oracle database is pretty much the most licensed piece of software the government does use outside of Redhat Linux and windows desktop.