Re: Plea to newbies

Good post, Art. I would generalize this to a 'Plea to Anyone Asking Questions About Informix', or indeed any other technical subject in an appropriate forum. The canonical reference on how to ask (technical) questions is E S Raymond's "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way", found at http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html.<http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/f aqs/smart-questions.html> The other plea to make is: please include platform and Informix version information. The platform should indicate O/S, and sometimes needs to make the hardware clear (Solaris SPARC vs Solaris Intel; Linux on PPC vs zSeries vs Intel vs ...). Include the complete version number of the Informix software; sometimes, the last parts are very crucial - for example: the W1 in 11.50.FC9W1 could be very significant, as could the platform on which it appears. On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 07:19, Art Kagel <art.kagel@gmail.com> wrote: > I post this, or something very like it about once a year. It seems to be > overdue. This is addressed mainly to newbies, but we are all guilty of > doing it occassionally, so all should at least remember that they read it > last year ;-) > > PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE: > > When you have a problem that you cannot solve and you decide there may be > someone in the greater Informix Community who can help you, please DO NOT > post the solution you tried and could not get to work asking us "How do I > make this solution work?" PLEASE post your original problem and ask us > "How do I solve this problem?" > > That said, of course if you have already tried or rejected one or more > solutions that did not get the job done - or which might have worked if you > only knew some secret trick - post those solutions you have tried as well. > You may have been on the edge of a solution and missed a trick or at the > very least you will be less likely to get replies that tell you to try > something you have already tried or rejected. > > But the important part is to post the ORIGINAL PROBLEM! The post today > with the subject "DBDELIMITER in dbexport/dbimport process" is a good > example. The OP was clear and concise in his description of what he tried > and listed several alternatives he had already thought of. All good. The > only problem was his question was "I'm trying to make a dbexport/dbimport > process on a big database (30go+) in order to change the dbs structure." > At least the OP posted a problem before describing the failed solution, > however, it was not the original problem. The original problem was > something like: "I need to move my database tables to new dbspaces. I have > tried dbexport/dbimport but ...." Because of this it took five hours > before a truly better solution was presented to the OP and that only > happened after the OP responded to the group as a whole with "For having > more accurate info, the structure must not change, i only want to move to a > different dbspace structure." > > So, again, PLEASE post your ORIGINAL problem, not the solution you can't > get to work! > -- Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler@gmail.com> #include <disclaimer.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2011.0612 - http://dbi.perl.org "Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused." --14dae9340419f908ca04b3fbcf3e