Views

As part of the server crash, we have been moving/scripting/writing stuff to live in the new environment. Different ways of doing the same thing, but my poor fingers and brain have been doing the same thing on this server for about 4 years.

One of the things that got me over the past day or so was when a couple of my databases were moved, they didn't have the same objects. We need to pause for a second for some words: View -A different way to look at a table or groups of tables. They may contain logic or just make the table look friendlier to an end user or enforce security. Views are dynamic and reflect the changing data within the underlying tables. Tables - A place to store data. They stay the same unless you manipulate the data by an update, insert or delete.

What had happened is some of my views had been converted to tables during the copy. You access them the same way, so it took me a while to figure out what I thought was a moving picture was really static. One change in a script had me looking at old data instead of my view moving with the normal data flow.

To clean house, I dropped the tables and recreated the views. And everything started to work again.

To bring this back to my twisted geek self, it made me think more about what I consider moving and what I use to mark that movement. I expected at some point to be back to the old me, but I realize the view of the old me is static. When I imagine my old self at this point, it doesn't move, I have scripted it into a big table. But I don't want to be a table, I want to be a view. I want to reflect everything that has happened and that will happen in my life in a way that is dynamic and changing.


On a way side note, I need to thank Wendy for feeding me last night on the way home. I ran the roads to Aunt Shirley, and stopped by the house on the way back.