Happy Friday, all, and permit me to vent a little steam...

"How do I get X to do Y?" is a common question we see on this forum as
well as others. (Trigger for this was actually a LUG posting, not
here).

The Original Poster (OP) fails to explain:

- why they want to do this,
- what their environment is (OS, #records, performance needed, etc.),
- what they have tried as an alternative,
- the bigger picture of how they got themselves painted into this
corner, and what (ultimately) they *REALLY* need, which is not X to do
Y but starting at A and end up at Y.

I sympathize that a lot of posters have pulled out all their hair and
are at the last resort, but that's no excuse for taking it out on the
unpaid volunteers here to help. We geeks often make the bad assumption
that everyone knows what we're talking about when we ask an 8-word
question, but we can't really fill in "when I try this in MariaDB" or
"on the web" or "using a Database Container with Stonefield Toolkit."

I have spent a *LOT* of time answering questions online, starting with
the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System in 1976 (happy anniversary to me!)
and I need to cut back on annoying myself by asking "What are you
seeing?" "What have you tried?" and "Have you looked at this:
www.lmgtfy.com?q=HowDoIGetXToDoY""

If you don't post:
"What I'm trying to Do"
"What I tried"
"What results I got"
"What results I expected"
"What my environment is" - relevant OS, hardware, LAN, infrastructure,
data structures, size of the data, etc.

then you're not going to get a useful answer. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

(Also, you'll find, if you write the long post of the 5 What's I
listed above, nine times out of ten you'll work out the solution. At
least, it works for me.)

Bonus points if you've read:

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Read it again.

This public service message brought to you by Ted Roche & Associates, LLC

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com

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