Re: newbie-desc command

sdg wrote:
> Thank you 'andrewst'. I whole heartily agree.
>
> P.S. to me. If you are a newbie then you will soon learn that there are all
> kinds that visit these ng's. Most are thoughtful folks but some are of the
> Sybrand, Prochak, Morgan ilk. You know them... they were those little 'pain
> in the ass', 'hall monitors' from grade school. Do to them what they should
> learn to do .... just ignore them.
>

You honor me by inclusion in that list. I do not feel up to the skills and knowledge of Sybrand and Daniel.

>
> andrewst wrote:

[]

>>
>>I fully endorse the idea that people should read the manuals and they
>>will learn a lot.  However, we should remember that sometimes these
>>people are "newbies" as "Me" claims to be.  How is a total newbie
>>expected to know that the way to find out the primary key of a table is
>>not via the DESC command (which shows SOME information about a table),
>>but by selecting from a set of views documented in the Oracle Database
>>Reference manual (not in the SQL reference manual for example?)
>>Sometimes people need a gentle nudge in the right direction!
>>

The issue I have with "Me" and posters like him/her is they seem not to have tried. Sybrand did give a BIG nudge, in fact the precise answer "Me" needed, in the very first response in this thread!

It was only in a later posting that "Me" mentioned asking the teacher. (The fact that the teacher did not know how to find the primary key is truely frightening!) Also, "Me" knew how to find tha answer in Navigator, which should have hinted that there is a way to get that information.

  So maybe "Me" got it more harshly than deserved. But "Me" admitted in the original post to not searching the archives in this group, not reading the FAQ, and gave no hint of asking others at work/school.

Finally, there is a little thing in tha manuals called an INDEX. You can make amazing connections using that part of the manuals. Even more, you can search all the manuals on-line.

-- 
Ed Prochak
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--
"Two roads diverged in a wood and I
I took the one less travelled by
and that has made all the difference."
robert frost