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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.
Because of course the government uses SQL. It's as stupid as saying the government doesn't use electricity or something equally stupid. The government is myriad agencies running myriad programs on myriad hardware with myriad people. My damned computers at home are using at least 2-3 SQL databases for some of the programs I run.
SQL is damn near everywhere where data sets are found.
Might seem like a stupid question, but I'm in nostupidquestions sooo... Did Elon really do this tweet with the word "retard" in it? Obviously am on Lemmy so don't use Twitter.
Frankly the whole exchange sounds like Hollywood tech jargon.vaguely relevant words used in a not quite sensible way....
"The government" is multiple agencies and departments. There is no single computer system, database, mainframe, or file store that the entire US goverment uses. There is no standard programming language used. There is no standard server configuration. Each agency is different. Each software project is different.
When someone says the government doesn't use sql, they don't know what they are talking about. It could be refering to the fact that many government systems are ancient mainframe applications that store everything in vsam. But it is patently false that the government doesn't use sql. I've been on a number of government contracts over the years, spanning multiple agencies. MsSQL was used in all but one.
Furthermore, some people share SSNs, they are not unique. It's a common misconception that they are, but anyone working on a government software learns this pretty quickly. The fact that it seems to be a big shock goes to show that he doesn't know what he is doing and neither do the people reporting to him.
Not only is he failing to understand the technology, he is failing to understand the underlying data he is looking at.
working on government software
FTFY
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 Vice Bro doesn't understand how SQL works).
I'm not aware of any instance where two people share an SSN though. The Social Security Administration even goes as far as to say they don't recycle the SSNs of dead people (its linked a couple times in other comments and Voyager doesn't let me save drafts of comments, I'll make an edit to this comment with that link for you).
Can you point me to somewhere showing multiple people can share an SSN?
Edit: as promised: The Social Security FAQ page
My wife has a tax payment history under two different legal names which share a single SSN
I mean I don't know a ton about SQL but one thing to keep in mind about SSNs is they were not originally meant to be used for identification but because we have no form of national id and places still needed a way to verify who you are people just started using SSNs for that since it's something everyone has and there wasn't really a better option. So now the government has been having to try and make them work for that and make them more secure. The better solution would be to make some form of national id that is designed to be secure but Republicans and people like Musk would probably call that government overreach or a way to spy and track people.
Assuming the whole "duplicate SSN" thing isn't just a complete fabrication, we have no idea what table he was even looking at! A table of transactions e.g. would have a huge number of duplicate SSNs.
The fact that SSN aren't singular identifiers has been public knowledge for quite a while. ID analytics has shown in over a decade of studies that some people have multiple SSN attached to their name, while some (over five million) SSN are used by three or more living individuals. If you search "ID analytics SSN" you'll find loads of articles reporting on this dating back to 2010 and a bit before.
This is from 15 years ago, so I don't know how much has changed since then. But this sounds like the sort of thing they mean.
https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/odds-someone-else-has-your-ssn-one-7-6c10406347
I'd imagine the numbers of dead people eventually get cycled around to. 9 digits only gives you 999,999,999 people to go through, and we have over a third of that in existence right now.