The first time, and the first time 2.
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I wish I had the option - developed by an external party, I'm glad to say we've moved development in-house. Actually, in spite of all these horrific examples I keep posting, I'm charged with redeveloping from VB6 to .NET MVVM architecture - I'm lead developer on the project, so have tried (as far as possible) to introduce good practice. There are still issues - the database we have to access is as bad, if not worse, than the VB code (many tables with no PKs (at least until I add them the first time I have to touch it), triggers doing insane things, and tables with names TCMPCOMMABSOLUTE (which stores insurance policies), but at least we can slowly get things working in a sane manner.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
Do you have database tables that are called something like "ZZZZZZ_tblYNManualDELETE"? I have no idea what this table held because it's contents are a bunch of gibberish, but I can say that the application never touches it. I think... Or touches the 35 or so other tables with similar naming "conventions".
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Dave Kreskowiak -
Do you have database tables that are called something like "ZZZZZZ_tblYNManualDELETE"? I have no idea what this table held because it's contents are a bunch of gibberish, but I can say that the application never touches it. I think... Or touches the 35 or so other tables with similar naming "conventions".
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave KreskowiakLucky bastard... We just finished the porting of an AS400 DB, where table names were T123P3 and column names were C23A1. The one designed it dead years ago and we had to read table-table to figure out what the table for. We got some help from an application we could run against the DB, but took over 8 months to identify all tables and columns...And just for the fun - the DB was as far as it can be to be normalized...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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...and that's nothing like good clear variable naming. Did you string the coder up by his thumbs? ;)
You looking for sympathy? You'll find it in the dictionary, between sympathomimetic and sympatric (Page 1788, if it helps)
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Lucky bastard... We just finished the porting of an AS400 DB, where table names were T123P3 and column names were C23A1. The one designed it dead years ago and we had to read table-table to figure out what the table for. We got some help from an application we could run against the DB, but took over 8 months to identify all tables and columns...And just for the fun - the DB was as far as it can be to be normalized...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
Maybe not so lucky. A lot of data is in columns with names that may be worse than cryptic. These names are just downright deceiving, like "LpkEngineeringPeerReviewName". Seems like it would hold the name of someone doing some kind of peer review, right? WRONG! It stores the type of installer a piece of software uses, in plain text, like "Automated MSI w/MST". Nearly half the fields in the entire database are like this. It took me about 6 months to map every field to what it really contains and write importers for everything I needed.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave Kreskowiak -
Maybe not so lucky. A lot of data is in columns with names that may be worse than cryptic. These names are just downright deceiving, like "LpkEngineeringPeerReviewName". Seems like it would hold the name of someone doing some kind of peer review, right? WRONG! It stores the type of installer a piece of software uses, in plain text, like "Automated MSI w/MST". Nearly half the fields in the entire database are like this. It took me about 6 months to map every field to what it really contains and write importers for everything I needed.
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave KreskowiakAh, that's something an old colleague called "repurposing" - rather than change a column name, the column is "repurposed" to be used for something entirely different. What could go wrong?
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
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Do you have database tables that are called something like "ZZZZZZ_tblYNManualDELETE"? I have no idea what this table held because it's contents are a bunch of gibberish, but I can say that the application never touches it. I think... Or touches the 35 or so other tables with similar naming "conventions".
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave KreskowiakYep, that's dire. We've some godawful excrement here, but not that particular flavour.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
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...and that's nothing like good clear variable naming. Did you string the coder up by his thumbs? ;)
You looking for sympathy? You'll find it in the dictionary, between sympathomimetic and sympatric (Page 1788, if it helps)
They should be strung up by their index fingers. I have a feeling they peck-type :)
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Ah, that's something an old colleague called "repurposing" - rather than change a column name, the column is "repurposed" to be used for something entirely different. What could go wrong?
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
Rob Grainger wrote:
What could go wrong?
Let me count the ways... :-D
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave Kreskowiak -
From the classic VB project I'm porting...
' Module-level variables
Dim FirstTime As Boolean
Dim FirstTime2 As Boolean' ... and in some event handler
If FirstTime = False Then
If FirstTime2 = False Then
' ...
End If
End IfThere's nothing like good clear variable naming.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
I wish there was a second first time for a lot of things in life... :sigh:
It's an OO world.
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
} -
Do you have database tables that are called something like "ZZZZZZ_tblYNManualDELETE"? I have no idea what this table held because it's contents are a bunch of gibberish, but I can say that the application never touches it. I think... Or touches the 35 or so other tables with similar naming "conventions".
A guide to posting questions on CodeProject
Click this: Asking questions is a skill. Seriously, do it.
Dave KreskowiakA database I access where I am has a bunch of DONOTUSEblahblahblah tables. :sigh:
