I am one of the developers on a very small team and have just found the following query

I would love to hear your ideas for what you think was being attempted here!

SELECT ... FROM client WHERE CAST(ABS(SIN(clientId)) AS BIT) = 0

  • @[email protected]
    5•6 months ago

    You’re right in that any non-zero value casted to bit becomes 1, but that includes negative values, so I’m even more confused why you’d need ABS there…

    • @Jimbabwe
      2•6 months ago

      Well then, to answer OP’s question about intent, I don’t have much of a clue, but here’s some Idea Ore that maybe someone can refine into a plausible explanation:

      • clientId basically has to be sequential or none of this makes sense
      • conceptually, I believe this statement is equivalent to clientId%180 == 0
      • i can’t fathom CAST(ABS(SIN())) being more efficient than modular division, so maybe the dev was trying to be clever, hated the hardcoded 180, or some other unknown going on
      • a sine wave goes -∿- so this is where it hits the x-axis
      • given that, there has to be some periodic or cyclical purpose, relating to the why/how of the clientId creation. For example, when the results of this are graphed with a created_at timestamp, it might give useful insights to growth (or something)