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
Well abs(sin(x)) is always going to return a value between 0 and 1, and I dunno how casting to bit works… if it rounds this might be used to consistently grab half the users. If CAST(anything except 0) as BIT —> 1, then this could be used to grab a very small subset of users? If their clientIds happen to be clientId%180 == 0
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…
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)
