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.

  • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    10 days ago

    The initial statement I believe is down to a combination of the above and also the lack of domain knowledge around social security. The primary key on the social security table would be a composite key of both the SSN and a date of birth—duplicates are expected of just parts of the key.

    Since SSNs are never reused, what would be the purpose of using the SSN and birth date together as part of the primary key? I guess it is the one thing that isn’t supposed to ever change (barring a clerical error) so I could see that as a good second piece of information, just not sure what it would be adding.

    Note: if duplicate SSNs are accidentally issued my understanding is that they issue a new one to one of the people and I don’t know how to find the start of the thread on twitter since I only use it when I accidentally click on a link to it.

    https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html

    Q20: Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?

    A: No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder’s death. Even though we have issued over 453 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.

    • halcyonloon@midwest.socialEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      Take this with a grain of salt as I’m not a dev, but do work on CMS reporting for a health information tech company. Depending on how the database is designed an SSN could appear in multiple tables.

      In my experience reduplication happens as part of generating a report so that all relevant data related to a key and scope of the report can be gathered from the various tables.