[dba-SQLServer] Copy a database using astore procedureorfunction

Thanks Arthur for the old "college try".  I don't know if you have ever
looked at the priesthood, but they REALLY don't like any implications that
they are a priesthood, nor that the system is unfriendly.

I guess you have seen that already though.

I have to honest and say that I too find the wizards extremely useful.  If
the wizards would write their actions into SQL and paste them into a module
like Excel will do, now THAT would be awesome.  At some point (when you need
automation) the wizards cease to be useful.  And then it becomes "sink or
swim".  Not really much in between. 

I have been programming since the late 70s and I have to say, the scripts in
SQL Server just look like command files from DOS to me (as Gustav so
observantly put it).  With just about the same level of feedback if
something goes wrong.  

The priesthood likes it because having spent years learning it, it is what
makes them priests.  I for one find the priests here about as useless as the
ones out in the churches.

Good luck in the war you just stepped into.  Mine is done.  ;-)

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur
Fuller
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 9:34 PM
To: Discussion concerning MS SQL Server
Subject: Re: [dba-SQLServer] Copy a database using astore
procedureorfunction

This is going to be a difficult message to phrase correctly. I want to be
extremely careful here because I am extremely uncomfortable with Paul
Nielsen's perspective and attitude. With anyone whose address is sqlbible
one must be careful, but I need to say that Paul's attitude is not in the
realm of sharing information with newbies, but rather in the realm of "I
came from the command line and therefore you should learn it first". Perhaps
that is not what Paul intends, but that is how I'm perceiving his line here.
I myself take a different path. I think "use the wizards while you're
learning, as much as possible", and trace what happened as a result of your
instructions -- if and when you're ready for that. To say, "Don't use the
wizards" is to negate all the work the development team put into this part
of the product, not to mention that the wizards get things done. This is not
to say that I am ready to marry the wizard-builders, but it is to appreciate
their efforts. As it happens, I use tools from ApexSQL and Red Gate that
solve problems the built-ins do not.

Paul has an excellent point when it comes to writing cert-exams. These
typically do not want to know which things to click to do a given job; they
want the underlying SQL, and this is a good thing. But you can get things
done using the wizards, and learn how they do it at the same time. Paul
seems to be ignoring the growth path, and instead (as my father did to me)
that the best way to learn to swim is to throw you off the end of the pier.
As a victim of that teaching strategy, I do protest, and suggest another
way.

JC's point is valid, and Paul's command-line objections are valid too --
once you get to a certain point, but definitely not at the outset. Paul is
perpetuating the "priesthood" mentality, and I for one take serious
objection to that attitude, but I am attempting to do so gracefully and
merely suggest that it overlooks the tutorial and
getting-things-done-right-now phase.

I hope that these objections were phrased gently enough so as not to start a
war.

Arthur


On 3/25/08, jwcolby <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, but it is not automated.  I know how to copy a database, I have 
> been doing so for months - with the menus from the gui.  I need to 
> automate this whole thing.  You don't even have to detach with the 
> wizard.
>
> I need to do it from code.
>
>
>
> John W. Colby
> Colby Consulting
> www.ColbyConsulting.com