Fortunately we don’t use much Microsoft software at my job. But we do have one vendor-dependent application that requires us to use SQL Server. I needed to add a column to a table indicating when a record was modified. So I dutifully went to Microsoft’s MSDN site to learn how this is done in SQL Server. I came across the “timestamp” data type. “Hmmm,” I foolishly thought, “maybe this will help me with creating a time stamp.” But no, the documentation says: “The SQL Server timestamp data type has nothing to do with times or dates.” It’s actually a sequential record modification marker that’s useful in data recovery, but it has “…no relationship to time.”

I guess this is the kind of stuff people have to spend their time learning when they go for Microsoft Certification.