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It is likely that dba.stackexchange.com will be leaving beta in the near future. While the site has been in beta, questions have been migrated "only for exceptional circumstances", but that will change once the site is launched.

Obviously questions should only be migrated if the SF community would prefer them to be - so I thought it would be good to ask what kind of questions you would prefer to remain here (even if they are a good fit for dba.se) and which questions you would prefer to lose.

I'm only referring to new questions that would be migrated if they had a better home but currently are tolerated because they don't, and are not so far off-topic to be closed.

Please post links to existing questions, along with your rationale for proposing that such a question should be kept on SF or that it should be migrated (bearing in mind no-one is proposing actually migrating old questions) - I have added an answer myself as an example.

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  • 2
    similar question posted on SO here
    – user83664
    Commented Aug 3, 2011 at 16:53
  • I'm thoroughly amused that mSO has managed to generate almost 2000 characters of useless debate so far without so much as the semblance of an actual answer.
    – Chris S
    Commented Aug 4, 2011 at 3:16
  • The flip side of this coin is: What questions to DBA want and not want?
    – Mark Henderson Mod
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 2:27
  • possible duplicate of Where do SQL questions belong?
    – Bart De Vos
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 1:04
  • @Bart That question is about "SQL (the language, not the server)" - this one is intended to be much broader
    – user83664
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 13:04
  • @MarkHenderson That is a good question and is answered by our faq - but in brief we are trying to be a good home for almost all database-related questions, the exception being the most basic SQL questions which we migrate to SO
    – user83664
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 13:05

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Question about configuring the software and typical administrative tasks (backup & recovery; installation; processor, memory & hardware; engine selection; clustering) should stay.

Questions about DB design (everything from elementary table/query/report design to normalization, sharding, partitioning, relations & cascade operations, etc) and performance (profiling, query optimization, parallelization) should be migrated to dba.SE

Question about queries (application generated, stored procedures, injection protection, etc) or APIs (ODBC, Libraries, et al) should be migrated to SO (not 100% sure on this destination, but makes the most sense to me at the moment; I'm open to suggestions but they don't belong on SF). Advanced or highly intricate incarnations of these Questions should be migrated to dba.SE instead of SO (per Jeff, Jack, and others).

NoSQL still has the same concepts of administration, design, and application interface and should be delegated accordingly. BI and AIS get the same treatment.

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    as for paragraph 3, my guidance has been "advanced" stuff in that category belongs on dba
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Aug 3, 2011 at 22:19
  • @Jeff, sounds good to me. Any thoughs as to how you might define "advanced"? (Honest question from someone with "Basic T-SQL Reference" pinned to his cube wall)
    – Chris S
    Commented Aug 4, 2011 at 3:18
  • well it's self-selected, so it'll always be a little loose -- but I'd say if you rate yourself as "skilled intermediate" and still need help, probably best on DBA.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Aug 4, 2011 at 3:47
  • Do we want the NoSQL and BI crowd there too? BI especially overlaps. meta.dba.stackexchange.com/questions/270/… and meta.dba.stackexchange.com/q/320/630
    – gbn
    Commented Oct 16, 2011 at 19:06
  • @gbn Understandably I used SQL terminology, but most of the concepts still apply. Installing, configuring, and maintaining the software is SF. Data storage conventions and retrieval architecture belong on DBA.SE. API interactions belong on SO.
    – Chris S
    Commented Oct 16, 2011 at 20:41
  • As this is the highest voted answer: who is going to tell the DBA folks to change their FAQ as there are clearly conflicting points? I do not think it makes any sense to leave clearly definable areas like "installation" or "backup & recovery" on topic in both sites.
    – the-wabbit
    Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 21:22
  • Considering Database Administrators's size, and that I consider DBA a subset of SA, I don't really mind if their FAQ claims that they overlap a bit with us. But yeah, we're mostly in agreement that the installation and backup stuff belongs on Server Fault; though they're unlikely to migrate such Questions to us.
    – Chris S
    Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 21:50
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This question was asked on dba.se

My accepted answer uses two levels of analytic (windowing) functions to get the desired result in a single SQL statement. Not all RDBMSs provide analytic functions but the question was specifically for Oracle which is one of those that do.

If it had instead been asked on SF, it should have been migrated to dba.se (rather than SO) because it is a specialized SQL question more suited to that site.

please note I'm not necessarily saying I really think questions like this should be migrated to dba.se rather than SO, rather I'm posting an answer to get feedback on what the SF community think is right. Please upvote/downvote this answer according to your preference

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I think the answer was pretty clear in the question "Where do SQL questions belong?":

The way I see it:

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  • The DBA FAQ explicitly states Database Administration, including installation, provisioning, scaling, replication, migration, tuning, partitioning, clustering, referential-integrity, ddl Database backup, restore, export, import and etl, Database recovery, Data Model / database-design, Advanced Programming in server-side languages built into databases, including stored-procedures and triggers - so either the DBA FAQ needs to be updated or the current view on things at SF is too narrow.
    – the-wabbit
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 9:02
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    There is going to be overlap, no matter what. I don't think there is anything wrong with some overlap...
    – Bart De Vos
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 9:08
  • Personally, I rather would have not seen a dba spinoff of serverfault because of the massive overlap. The overlap induces the problem that either a) regulars have to watch two sites instead of one now or b) questioners are not getting their answers (or not getting them as quickly or as detailed as they could have been) because they've posted to the wrong site.
    – the-wabbit
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 9:17
  • @syneticon-dj I sympathise with your views - there is certainly a significant degree of overlap. I wonder if you have seen database-related questions tolerated on SF that you'd really rather not have though: those are good candidates for migration if they are on-topic on dba.se. There is an opportunity for SF (and particularly SO) to achieve more focus without seeing good questions go to waste.
    – user83664
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 13:09
  • @Bart see my response to your 'possible duplicate' comment above. You may be surprised to know there are large numbers of SQL language questions being migrated from SO to dba.se where we are trying our best to give them a good home (and I believe, succeeding). We also occasionally migrate SQL language questions to SO, but only the most basic ones.
    – user83664
    Commented Dec 21, 2011 at 13:11
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    @JackDouglas whenever I do, I leave a comment and possibly vote for migration. I also think that the current implementation of the migration feature is not adequate for the user's needs and hope it changes some day.
    – the-wabbit
    Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 21:26

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