When normalization goes wrong. Horribly.
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Now I don't pretend to know it all, so when I have questions I'm prepared to ask someone who might already have encountered a similar problem and listen to their suggestions. Unlike the muppets I work for. Today's project saw me looking at the feasibility of porting an existing Access database to SQL Server. Easy, thought I, but then I actually saw the "database" in question. To give you just one example of the horrors I'm looking at: The "Machine" table has a "Date Added" column. Now, if you're like me, you'd expect this to be a DateTime column. So I was surprised to see this as a numeric field featuring values such as 1,2,3,4 etc. I was even more surprised to see that this field is related to a "DateAdded" table, whose sole purpose is to give index values to dates. It currently has a seperate entry for each and every day up to 31/12/2015. :wtf:
"It was the day before today.... I remember it like it was yesterday." -Moleman
Some Sort Of Myan Calendar?
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Now I don't pretend to know it all, so when I have questions I'm prepared to ask someone who might already have encountered a similar problem and listen to their suggestions. Unlike the muppets I work for. Today's project saw me looking at the feasibility of porting an existing Access database to SQL Server. Easy, thought I, but then I actually saw the "database" in question. To give you just one example of the horrors I'm looking at: The "Machine" table has a "Date Added" column. Now, if you're like me, you'd expect this to be a DateTime column. So I was surprised to see this as a numeric field featuring values such as 1,2,3,4 etc. I was even more surprised to see that this field is related to a "DateAdded" table, whose sole purpose is to give index values to dates. It currently has a seperate entry for each and every day up to 31/12/2015. :wtf:
"It was the day before today.... I remember it like it was yesterday." -Moleman
"When normalization goes wrong. Horribly" With that title, I expected to see an old "Far Side" cartoon! The example is pretty funny either way.
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That's similar to an Excel-based puddle-of-crap I have to support now. Each worksheet has entries for dates up to early this September, there's a formula for determining which row to work on for each date. The problem is that I don't think I can add more rows, so to extend the supported timeframe I'll have to delete the oldest data. Be glad you are at least dealing with a ::cough:: database ::cough::. "Always look on the bright side of life." -- Monty Python
I'm sort of going off on a tangent here, but this reminds me of a most excellent Dilbert stripe a while ago. The pointy-haired boss has called an engineer into his office and says: Boss: My spreadsheet shows your job performance hasn't been very good lately. Engineer: Perhaps your spreadsheet is poorly conceived and does not capture the complexity of the real world. Boss: (silence) Engineer: And let's not forget the near certainty that your formulae are pointing to the wrong cells. Cracked me up! :D