You can't do that with SQL

A long time ago I led a DB2 pilot project for one of IBM's earliest DB2 customers in Canada. By default, that made me one of the most experienced DB2 users, outside of IBM, in the country.

It wasn't long before it all went to my head, and I found myself making authoritative pronouncements on all things DB2 related. Why not? I was qualified; I had a whole 3 months of DB2 experience to draw on.

One of the challenges was learning how to use SQL when our only reference materials came from a 5 day IBM course. As you might expect, we ran into one obstacle after another. And it wasn't just SQL, we had to figure out how to Bind PLANs (there were no Packages in those days) and how to set up and use a DB2 test environment.

My programmers would ask me for advice on how to code an SQL statement and most of the time I could help them, but once in a while I had to declare: "You can't do that with SQL." I was the DB2 ghuru after all, so if I couldn't figure out how to do it, then obviously it was impossible.

Well, there was this very bright young trainee who, after hearing me say "You can't do that with SQL", came back 30 minutes later with an SQL statement that did exactly what I said couldn't be done.

I took it with good humour, not at all irritated to be corrected by a mere trainee. (Well, not for the first few times anyway). It eventually became a sort of game: every time I used the words "can't" and "SQL" in the same sentence, he would (almost) always prove me wrong.

That was an important lesson for me: whenever you think you're the smartest guy in the room, take another look, you may have missed someone.