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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 2, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I’d personally love to give someone a blank Excel and that mileage problem, if I was interviewing them for a job with Excel use as part of the job description/job ad.

Seriously? My Excel job interview question looks more like this:

  • on worksheet A you have schema and table names and their sizes in the main DB
  • on worksheet B you have schema and table names and their sizes in the backup DB
  • show me all main DB tables that are either missing or have the wrong size
  • bonus question: show me which schemas are completely fine

Seriously. I’m not thinking of a job where Excel will be a primary tool for database work, but admin jobs and other jobs where Excel is an ancillary tool.

  1. Full outer join on table name
  2. Then just null and equality checks until you are there.

Admittedly I can't do this in Excel (because I don't use it), but it's a trival squeal (SQL) or any other tabular tool question

Left join, but ok. The trick is doing this in Excel.