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| | | Handling Inconvenient Requests This editorial was originally published on Dec 7, 2009. It is being re-run as Steve is on vacation. "You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want."
- Zig Ziglar Early in my career, I read a lot of books by self-help gurus, seeking advice on how to make my career successful. While I learned a lot of useful information, the one insight that has stuck with me the longest is the quote from Zig Ziglar you can see above. While this quote might be promising more than it can deliver, it still rings true with me in most cases. I find this advice particularly helpful when I am faced with situations where helping someone else might be inconvenient to me. Let's look at one example... It's almost 5:00 PM on Friday afternoon and you get a call from a manager (who is not your boss), asking if you can help him run a report he is having difficulty with. He needs the report now so that he can work on a presentation over the weekend, to be delivered on Monday morning. When you get an inconvenient request for help like this, there are several different ways you might decide on a response. You could say no, because: Why should you have to work overtime because some manager isn't smart enough to run his own report? Why should you help out if the manager can't plan his time better, and make the request earlier in the day? Maybe you don't like the manager, or don't know him very well, and you don't have any desire to help him. Maybe you don't have time, because you have an important appointment at 5:30 PM. You could say yes, because: Perhaps that particular report is complex, and you can understand why he might need help with it. Perhaps the manager was just told an hour ago that he had to make a presentation on Monday, and he didn't have time to ask for help earlier. Maybe you know and like the manager, so you don't mind helping out. Maybe you don't have any pressing time constraints, and putting in a little extra time won't cause any problems for you. I could provide lots more reasons for saying either yes or no to the manager's request, but I think you get the point. When someone asks you for something that is an inconvenience to you, there are lots of pros and cons for deciding whether or not to help out. When I am faced with these types of difficult decisions, I try to remember Zig Ziglar's advice and use it to help me make the best decision. I may not always make the best choice (who can?), but keeping his advice in mind helps me to make more right choices than wrong ones. What do you think? When faced with a difficult decision about whether or not to help someone when it is inconvenient for you, what thought process do you go through? Brad McGehee from SQLServerCentral.comJoin the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums |
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| | | Today's Question (by Steve Jones): I have this code to create a table and add an index. CREATE TABLE dbo.PurchaseOrder ( PurchaseOrderKey INT IDENTITY(1, 1) NOT NULL CONSTRAINT PurchaseOrderPK PRIMARY KEY , PONumber VARCHAR(100) , CustomerName VARCHAR(100) ); CREATE INDEX PurchaseOrderNDX_PO ON dbo.PurchaseOrder (PONumber) INCLUDE (CustomerName); GO I now run this: ALTER TABLE dbo.PurchaseOrder DROP COLUMN CustomerName GO What happens? |
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| | Yesterday's Question of the Day |
| Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones): I have this data frame: > teambatting2017 Tm AB R H Dbl Trpl HR RBI 1 ARI 5525 812 1405 314 39 220 776 2 ATL 5584 732 1467 289 26 165 706 3 BAL 5650 743 1469 269 12 232 713 4 BOS 5669 785 1461 302 19 168 735 5 CHC 5496 822 1402 274 29 223 785 6 CHW 5513 706 1412 256 37 186 670 7 CIN 5484 753 1390 249 38 219 715 8 CLE 5511 818 1449 333 29 212 780 9 COL 5534 824 1510 293 38 192 793 10 DET 5556 735 1435 289 35 187 699 11 HOU 5611 896 1581 346 20 238 854 12 KCR 5536 702 1436 260 24 193 660 13 LAA 5415 710 1314 251 14 186 678 14 LAD 5408 770 1347 312 20 221 730 15 MIA 5602 778 1497 271 31 194 743 16 MIL 5467 732 1363 267 22 224 695 17 MIN 5557 815 1444 286 31 206 781 18 NYM 5510 735 1379 286 28 224 713 19 NYY 5594 858 1463 266 23 241 821 20 OAK 5464 739 1344 305 15 234 708 21 PHI 5535 690 1382 287 36 174 654 22 PIT 5458 668 1331 249 36 151 635 23 SDP 5356 604 1251 227 31 189 576 24 SEA 5551 750 1436 281 17 200 714 25 SFG 5551 639 1382 290 28 128 612 26 STL 5470 761 1402 284 28 196 728 27 TBR 5478 694 1340 226 32 228 671 28 TEX 5430 799 1326 255 21 237 756 29 TOR 5499 693 1320 269 5 222 661 30 WSN 5553 819 1477 311 31 215 796 I want to sort this by the number of home runs, descending. What command returns this data?
Answer: teambatting2017[order(-teambatting$HR),] Explanation: One way to do this is with the order() function. This orders the values by their indicies. Using this inside brackets, returns the data in that order. Since we want the largest home run totals first, we use a - in front of the ordering column. There is no sort() function. Ref: Sorting data - click here » Discuss this question and answer on the forums |
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