Crunching gears
(continuing from yesterday's count: FOUR of five.)
Back at work. Hating it immediately. Here's an example which shows so many of the things wrong with the situation at my employer.
At work, we maintain some databases. The databases hold public information. They are not large databases. The entirety of them could probably fit on a floppy disk, with some compression. A CD would be roomy.
We have a web site. On the web site, we have numerous interfaces which, in theory, should allow members of the public (and any other interested parties) to search said databases at their leisure.
Except that the interfaces are either -
- broken;
- showing incorrect information, and no-one knows why; or
- manually updated instead of automatically, and only when someone remembers to do it.
This is bad.
We also, at this employer, have an internal, staff-only interface to the database. It is pretty. It is shiny. It has been honed for many years to be, if not precisely slick, then at least mostly usable by people who can count past ten without taking their shoes off.
It is also broken.
I found this out today because I was handed a second-hand request to go pull a number or two out of this database. The numbers in question were totals listed on both the external website and the internal DB interface. The request came from an internal staff member, albeit one in a different building.
"I know," I said, "I will not only supply them the numbers, but I will send them a weblink to where they can near-instantly see those figures for themselves at any time they desire in future, because I am a thoughtful little peon."
Only the website numbers did not match the interface numbers.
So, being a newbug, I flagged down a passing colleague and inquired as to which one of the numbers was correct.
Oh no, they said. Both of those numbers are broken. You will have to dig into the guts of the database backend, and perform many an arcane ritual known only by one person who is not in the office today, in order to extract that tiny snippet of information manually before emailing it back to the requester in the other building, and of course there is no way to provide them with a link which will Just Work.
So apparently it is my role here to fill in manually for broken-down computer systems which millions of other organisations on the planet have managed to implement successfully using a four-year-old, last week's toast, and half a can of warm beer.
This is the equivalent of being told to run alongside a car holding onto the axle because management can't figure out how to change a tyre, and are somehow under the impression that it would be cheaper to hire an axle-holder-runner for forty hours a week than call Roadside Assistance.
It's a standard fucking Oracle database on a standard fucking server with a standard fucking IIS webserver serving the employer's standard fucking website. How. Fucking. Hard. could it be to connect A to B? And to top it all off, the executive levels have been boo-hooing into their hankies for the past two weeks about their annual operational expenses running over budget.
GEE I WONDER WHY.
Back at work. Hating it immediately. Here's an example which shows so many of the things wrong with the situation at my employer.
At work, we maintain some databases. The databases hold public information. They are not large databases. The entirety of them could probably fit on a floppy disk, with some compression. A CD would be roomy.
We have a web site. On the web site, we have numerous interfaces which, in theory, should allow members of the public (and any other interested parties) to search said databases at their leisure.
Except that the interfaces are either -
- broken;
- showing incorrect information, and no-one knows why; or
- manually updated instead of automatically, and only when someone remembers to do it.
This is bad.
We also, at this employer, have an internal, staff-only interface to the database. It is pretty. It is shiny. It has been honed for many years to be, if not precisely slick, then at least mostly usable by people who can count past ten without taking their shoes off.
It is also broken.
I found this out today because I was handed a second-hand request to go pull a number or two out of this database. The numbers in question were totals listed on both the external website and the internal DB interface. The request came from an internal staff member, albeit one in a different building.
"I know," I said, "I will not only supply them the numbers, but I will send them a weblink to where they can near-instantly see those figures for themselves at any time they desire in future, because I am a thoughtful little peon."
Only the website numbers did not match the interface numbers.
So, being a newbug, I flagged down a passing colleague and inquired as to which one of the numbers was correct.
Oh no, they said. Both of those numbers are broken. You will have to dig into the guts of the database backend, and perform many an arcane ritual known only by one person who is not in the office today, in order to extract that tiny snippet of information manually before emailing it back to the requester in the other building, and of course there is no way to provide them with a link which will Just Work.
So apparently it is my role here to fill in manually for broken-down computer systems which millions of other organisations on the planet have managed to implement successfully using a four-year-old, last week's toast, and half a can of warm beer.
This is the equivalent of being told to run alongside a car holding onto the axle because management can't figure out how to change a tyre, and are somehow under the impression that it would be cheaper to hire an axle-holder-runner for forty hours a week than call Roadside Assistance.
It's a standard fucking Oracle database on a standard fucking server with a standard fucking IIS webserver serving the employer's standard fucking website. How. Fucking. Hard. could it be to connect A to B? And to top it all off, the executive levels have been boo-hooing into their hankies for the past two weeks about their annual operational expenses running over budget.
GEE I WONDER WHY.