[dba-VB] [AccessD] OT: Functional Testing: CTEclassification-tree editor

 > ...I thought that's how everyone does it :)

The bigger the company the more likely that is how it is done.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


William Hindman wrote:
> ...I thought that's how everyone does it :)
> 
> William
> "The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride 
> it, but in the end; there it is."
> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "jwcolby" <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
> Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 12:19 PM
> To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" 
> <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>; "VBA" <dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com>; 
> "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
> Subject: Re: [dba-VB] [AccessD] OT: Functional Testing: 
> CTEclassification-tree editor
> 
>> I had a very interesting conversation with my tax guy this
>> morning.  He had previously worked at Lowes Hardware in
>> their accounting department.
>>
>> The upshot of the conversation was that Lowes has to
>> interface to a huge number of legacy systems, systems from
>> suppliers, banks, systems from companies they purchased 10
>> years ago and inherited etc.  His comment of interest is
>> that in many cases they did not do testing.  Or more
>> correctly they threw data at the live system and looked at
>> what happened, and then used a feedback loop to work around
>> to what the system at the other end would accept.
>>
>> Sounds like poor Roz at her current assignment.
>>
>> I have to tell you that I have experienced this same thing.
>>  My disability insurance call center software has to
>> interface to about 10 (so far) completely different
>> insurance companies.  Each company has dozens of legacy
>> systems.
>>
>> We get "specs" for how to receive and transmit data to these
>> mainframe systems.  I write code to meet the spec, then we
>> send data.  We then get feedback from them about how to
>> change the program to meet the "REAL spec" which is never
>> the printed spec.  Iterate until the feedback stops and they
>> start accepting what we send without complaint.
>>
>> In one case they had specified how to output claim data that
>> they wanted to enter into their system.  In this one
>> (admittedly extreme) case it was in a vertical report
>> format, which we did.  Some six months later we discovered
>> that the format was designed to allow some key entry person
>> to key it into their system manually, and the "report order"
>> was the order that the data entry fields appeared on her screen.
>>
>> I got a chuckle out of that one.
>>
>> John W. Colby
>> www.ColbyConsulting.com