Cargo Cult Data Professionals
Ever since David Moutray introduced me to the concept of cargo cult programming, it's been running round and round in my head. I'm actually coming to believe that this is a major issue in all walks of life. True or not, we're absolutely seeing it in the data professionals space. Don't believe me? OK. A few questions. Do you work for one of the organizations that absolutely requires NOLOCK on all queries (even INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE)? Why? Because it runs faster? Why don't you just use READ_UNCOMMITTED for your isolation level? What's that? Never heard of isolation levels? I'll bet you also don't know what is meant by "dirty reads" then either. READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT anyone? In short, you're guilty of being in a cargo cult. You've got this form in your head of…