[AccessD] A "Real World Example" of Piss Poor Programming Pra ctice

Bruce Bruen bbruen at bigpond.com
Fri Aug 22 06:34:46 CDT 2003


Alan,

This sounds very much like an input only system created by people with
little technical skill and too much time on their hands.

I suggest you persevere, enter all your resume, all your resume, back to
preschool at least, and don't forget to include your college holiday
employment as a portable whale trainer and that 23 year stint as an
eskimo wrangler.  Get your colleges to contribute likewise.

Speak quietly to your boss, convince him of your need to engage the
services of a left handed Adelphi code repositioner fluent in the Swiss
language and have him sent the request to HR 3 or 4 days after the
"critical" deadline.

I am sure that any fears your have and all of your doubts about the
usefuleness of the employee resume database will be allayed by the speed
at which your request is addressed.

Cheers
Bruce


-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Lawhon, Alan
C Contractor/Morgan Research
Sent: Thursday, 21 August 2003 7:07 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] A "Real World Example" of Piss Poor Programming
Pra ctice


Arthur:

That's what I was doing, Arthur, but on one of the text boxes, (i.e. my
current job with my current employer), I had to do "creative writing" -
composing on the fly as I had not updated my resume in quite some time.
Apparently, I took too long to come up with those 1,000 words.

Yea, you're right: Always assume the worst.  :-(((

Alan
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur Fuller [mailto:artful at rogers.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 3:42 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: [AccessD] A "Real World Example" of Piss Poor Programming
Practice


Write it in NotePad or NoteTab or whatever then paste the bits into the
appropriate controls. You're far too experienced to fall for this, Alan.
I've read lots of your posts and you are far from stupid.

Always assume the worst.

Arthur

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Lawhon, Alan C
Contractor/Morgan Research
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 3:43 PM
To: AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
Cc: 'Elam, Debbie'
Subject: [AccessD] A "Real World Example" of Piss Poor Programming
Practice


Several weeks ago the HR (Human Resources) Department in my company sent
out an email informing all of us that we had to enter our resumes into a
"new" HR database that they had developed.  We were given a deadline
(this coming Friday) for entering the data and told how important it was
to complete this task.  The HR Manager stated (in the email) that any
employee failing to meet the Friday deadline would be reported to
his/her immediate supervisor.

So I spent two hours (yesterday afternoon) entering my data only to
experience the following calamity:


-----Original Message-----
From: Lawhon, Alan C Contractor/Morgan Research
[mailto:alan.lawhon at us.army.mil]
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 9:40 AM
To: <addressee deleted to protect the guilty>
Subject: Problem With the Morgan HR Database ...


Dear HR Database Problem Fixer:

I spent a considerable amount of time yesterday afternoon loading my
resume into Morgan's new HR database.  I had completed "Step 11" of the
process, (loading Employment Information), when time ran out - I had to
vacate the building.  In accordance with the printed instructions, I
clicked the "Save & Exit" button.  The screen immediately went blank and
an error message: "HTTP 404 Termination" or "HTTP 403 error" (or some
similar wording) appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
As my heart sank, I immediately reentered the program and my worst fear
was confirmed: Not a single character of the entered data (not even the
blank spaces) was saved.  :-(((

I was VERY CAREFUL to follow the program instructions precisely and to
NOT exceed the 1,000 character limit - including spaces - in any of the
fields. (There were a few fields that I left blank as I did not know -
or could not remember - the information.)  Obviously, I will have to
reenter all the data and try again, but before I do that I have two
questions.  First, have you had similar reports (from other users) of
this problem with the program? Since I was concentrating my effort
almost exclusively on the information I was entering, I didn't click the
"Save & Exit" button until the very end - which may have been a mistake
on my part.  I guess my second question is as
follows: What assurance is there that this program will function
properly and actually save entered data?

Alan C. Lawhon

--------------

I received the following response to my inquiry.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim <a Support Tech with the Company that Developed This Kludge>
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 10:47 AM
To: Lawhon, Alan C Contractor/Morgan Research;
Subject: RE: Problem With the Morgan HR Database ...


Alan,

My apologies for your trouble, but you must click the "Save & Exit"
buttons to save each screen's data.  This is clearly posted at the top
of each screen in red, stating: "If you do not click one of the "Save"
buttons your information will not be saved."

Regarding the termination problem, the error you received indicates it
was not a problem with the software, but with your connection.  Here is
a note from our lead programmer:

"""If he had received an application error, it would have logged it to
the windows even log, sent us email, and forwarded him on to the
Error.aspx form page for further feedback.  As none of these things
happened, then there was some error that was external (and out of our
hands) to the B2Secure application.  It sounds like his internet
connection dropped.

Just for reference, the session time out is set to 90 minutes.  Had he
exceeded this amount of time without clicking anything, he would have
been sent to the login page (without error) and his information would
have been lost as well."""

As for the integrity of the system functioning properly and saving data,
we have received no other complaints.

Thanks,

Tim

-------------

Following is my reply to "Tim" (and his "lead programmer" ...)

Tim:

I would be grateful if you relayed a brief message to your lead
programmer. In a well designed GUI interface, if you have not
implemented a periodic "auto backup" feature which executes seamlessly
in the background, (let's say once every ten minutes), you should design
and implement a "warning" dialogue box which displays a message to the
user approximately five minutes before any session timeout occurs.  This
dialogue should inform the user that he/she must save their work
immediately.  Allowing a session timeout to occur, with a subsequent
loss of data, is indicative of poor programming design and inadequate
testing.

As for your contention that "... the system is functioning properly and
we have received no other complaints," that does not jell with what I am
hearing.

Alan C. Lawhon


Debbie Elam: I feel your pain!  :-(((




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