Database misstep
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When database design takes a misstep:
I had an MR-2 with license BINARY, then I upgraded to SOURCE, then I moved those plates first to a 4-Runner (I miss that car!), then to a Z28 (which I still drive).
The place I had my maintenance done organized customer cars by license plate numbers. Bad idea with me.
When I brought in the MR-2 with SOURCE instead of BINARY after my "upgrade", they said "first time here?" Uh no, you've been maintaining this car for 3 years. "Oh", and they added an annotation to see "BINARY" for records. Then, a year later, I brought the 4-Runner in, with SOURCE. "Wait, this isn't an MR-2!" I know. And they had to figure out how to annotate that. Ahh, databases looking for unique keys and getting it wrong.
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renaming the old thing, and reusing the old name for a new one
Are you by any chance an Angular developer?
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If only each vehicle had a unique identifier, call it a Vehicle Identification Number.
@hungrier said in Database misstep:
Are you by any chance an Angular developer?
ITYM AngularJS
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@error said in Database misstep:
If only each vehicle had a unique identifier, call it a Vehicle Identification Number.
Exactly what I thought.
And I can just hear all the users whining about how it's 17 characters long, "that's too much to enter".
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@error said in Database misstep:
If only each vehicle had a unique identifier, call it a Vehicle Identification Number.
And they can name the DB column "VIN_number"!
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@dcon Too unclear.
VEHICLE_VIN_NUMBER.
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@PleegWat nah,
VEHICLE_VIN_IDENTIFICATION_NUMBER_ID
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@Bim-Zively said in Database misstep:
@error said in Database misstep:
If only each vehicle had a unique identifier, call it a Vehicle Identification Number.
Exactly what I thought.
And I can just hear all the users whining about how it's 17 characters long, "that's too much to enter".
You can really just get away with the last 6 digits, or maybe even last 4, depending on how high your volume is and whether you do service in addition to sales. I mean, if it's just sales, then once it rolls off the lot, you can archive that VIN's details.
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@PotatoEngineer said in Database misstep:
You can really just get away with the last 6 digits, or maybe even last 4, depending on how high your volume is and whether you do service in addition to sales. I mean, if it's just sales, then once it rolls off the lot, you can archive that VIN's details.
Subject to any regulatory / law-enforcement requirement that you are able to provide information about the sale later on.
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@PotatoEngineer I recently spent a 9 months contract doing database work at an auto leasing company.
That to say, "you shouldn't do that".
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@Bim-Zively did you run into X, goes by Myrddin, there?
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@Bim-Zively said in Database misstep:
"that's too much to enter".
"Use the fuckin' barcode scanner nimwits!"
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@Randal-L-Schwartz said in Database misstep:
I had an MR-2 with license BINARY, then I upgraded to SOURCE, then I moved those plates first to a 4-Runner (I miss that car!)
It took me until the last word quoted above to understand WTF you were on about … Starting off, I thought “MR-2” was some kind of program and BINARY and SOURCE were different levels of software licence for it. “Plates” then confused the hell out of me in that mental context.
/me asks Google
An MR-2 is a Toyota, is it? Oh, and a 4-Runner seems to be as well?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Database misstep:
@Bim-Zively said in Database misstep:
"that's too much to enter".
"Use the fuckin' barcode scanner nimwits!"
Do they install barcodes of the VIN along with the readable part? I don't know, I own a Honda.
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@Gribnit said in Database misstep:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Database misstep:
@Bim-Zively said in Database misstep:
"that's too much to enter".
"Use the fuckin' barcode scanner nimwits!"
Do they install barcodes of the VIN along with the readable part? I don't know, I own a Honda.
Don't know about all cars, but my Subaru has one on the plate mounted inside the driver's door (mounted on the car frame). The one on the dash is just the numbers.
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@Gribnit said in Database misstep:
install
Not sure if it's standard, but in many places it's accompanied with one. I am pretty sure mine is right underneath the windshield, driver's side. I can probably take picture if someone "asks" "nicely" 😘
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Database misstep:
I can probably take picture if someone "asks" "nicely" 😘
On no account does anyone want to see your VIN you pervert.
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@dcon said in Database misstep:
@Gribnit said in Database misstep:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Database misstep:
@Bim-Zively said in Database misstep:
"that's too much to enter".
"Use the fuckin' barcode scanner nimwits!"
Do they install barcodes of the VIN along with the readable part? I don't know, I own a Honda.
Don't know about all cars, but my Subaru has one on the plate mounted inside the driver's door (mounted on the car frame). The one on the dash is just the numbers.
When I take my car to the oil change place they use a scanner on the VIN on the dash.
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@Tsaukpaetra Maybe just because it's a finance company, but we had lots of use cases where a vehicle needed to be referenced when it wasn't actually sitting right there.
And we did have a circumstance where a lease couldn't go live because a typo on the VIN managed to match another vehicle already in the system. Two new cars with the same VIN where, thankfully, not allowed.
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@Randal-L-Schwartz said in Database misstep:
When database design takes a misstep:
I had an MR-2 with license BINARY, then I upgraded to SOURCE, then I moved those plates first to a 4-Runner (I miss that car!), then to a Z28 (which I still drive).
The place I had my maintenance done organized customer cars by license plate numbers. Bad idea with me.
When I brought in the MR-2 with SOURCE instead of BINARY after my "upgrade", they said "first time here?" Uh no, you've been maintaining this car for 3 years. "Oh", and they added an annotation to see "BINARY" for records. Then, a year later, I brought the 4-Runner in, with SOURCE. "Wait, this isn't an MR-2!" I know. And they had to figure out how to annotate that. Ahh, databases looking for unique keys and getting it wrong.
It is easier to see that they might have a problem finding the same car with a new tag, because that happens less frequently. Unless they have a high turnover with their customers, you would think they would be familiar with people getting new cars with the same tags.
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@jinpa said in Database misstep:
new cars with the same tags.
Is this the norm in the USA, then? That plates belong to the owner, so if you get a new car, it gets the same licence plate number as your old one?
(I ask because in the Netherlands, the number “belongs” to the car and there is absolutely no way to keep your old one when you trade in that car.)
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@Gurth said in Database misstep:
@jinpa said in Database misstep:
new cars with the same tags.
Is this the norm in the USA, then? That plates belong to the owner, so if you get a new car, it gets the same licence plate number as your old one?
(I ask because in the Netherlands, the number “belongs” to the car and there is absolutely no way to keep your old one when you trade in that car.)
In CA, the plate stays with the car - until you specifically transfer that plate to a new car - which is typical with personalized plates.
Does that mean in the Netherlands you can't have personalized plates?
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@dcon said in Database misstep:
Does that mean in the Netherlands you can't have personalized plates?
Correct. No vanity plates for us
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@robo2 said in Database misstep:
@dcon said in Database misstep:
Does that mean in the Netherlands you can't have personalized plates?
Correct. No vanity plates for us
And on top of that, lots of interesting plates are impossible because vowels are not used (though the first few series which had only two letters did include vowels). Also certain letter combinations which may be offensive are not used.
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@Gurth said in Database misstep:
@jinpa said in Database misstep:
new cars with the same tags.
Is this the norm in the USA, then? That plates belong to the owner, so if you get a new car, it gets the same licence plate number as your old one?
(I ask because in the Netherlands, the number “belongs” to the car and there is absolutely no way to keep your old one when you trade in that car.)
Yes, but judging by dcon's reply below, apparently it varies from state to state. In most states, yes, although technically the plates belong to the state, you can transfer the plates from your old car to your new car. But, this generally only works if you're trading in your old car to the dealer.
Regarding the plates belonging to the state, there was a court case many years ago about a Jehovah's Witness in New Hampshire who got a ticket for covering up with masking tape the state's motto on the tag, "Live Free Or Die", which was a philosophy which did not agree with his religious belief. I didn't hear the ruling.
This seems similar to the Washington, DC motto on their license plates, "Taxation Without Representation." Even if the factual accuracy of the phrase is undisputed, there's still the question of whether a local government can constitutionally force their residents to display a politically-loaded statement on their own property (their cars).
Follow-up: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/228/wooley-v-maynard
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@robo2
Suckers... You don't have the joy of knowing that this Alex guy two streets past your house is a dick and thinks parking in the parking spaces is optional... Or rather you would have known he's a dick with his parking policy but you wouldn't have known it was DENALEX.
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@Luhmann said in Database misstep:
thinks parking in the parking spaces is optional
It is. You're allowed to drive right past them. I've probably driven by thousands. How do you get anywhere?
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@robo2 said in Database misstep:
@dcon said in Database misstep:
Does that mean in the Netherlands you can't have personalized plates?
Correct. No vanity plates for us
Golly, how repressive. You still get hookers and blow, right?
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@Gribnit said in Database misstep:
You still get hookers and blow
you do know we are talking about the Netherlands, right?
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@dcon said in Database misstep:
@Gurth said in Database misstep:
@jinpa said in Database misstep:
new cars with the same tags.
Is this the norm in the USA, then? That plates belong to the owner, so if you get a new car, it gets the same licence plate number as your old one?
(I ask because in the Netherlands, the number “belongs” to the car and there is absolutely no way to keep your old one when you trade in that car.)
In CA, the plate stays with the car - until you specifically transfer that plate to a new car - which is typical with personalized plates.
Does that mean in the Netherlands you can't have personalized plates?
It wouldn't automatically mean that. In the UK (the law on this point might have changed, but I doubt it's much different), there is the "official" number on the plate, and you can substitute a plate with a vanity number in its place, but:
- When you sell / gift / whatever the car to another person, you have to restore the official number plate (not necessarily the original physical plate, but a plate with the official number).
- You can transfer the vanity number to another car on the same basis.
So your car is AB53HGT regardless, but you can make it FR52STC if you prefer, so long as you restore it to being AB53HGT when you transfer it to someone else. (The numbers are linked to the year of first registration, so you may not substitute FR54STC because it suggests the car is newer than it really is.)
EDIT: Note that your vanity plate must still follow the normal plate format for the age of the vehicle.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Database misstep:
but you can make it FR52STC if you prefer
Probably more BIGGUSDICKUS
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Database misstep:
@dcon said in Database misstep:
@Gurth said in Database misstep:
@jinpa said in Database misstep:
new cars with the same tags.
Is this the norm in the USA, then? That plates belong to the owner, so if you get a new car, it gets the same licence plate number as your old one?
(I ask because in the Netherlands, the number “belongs” to the car and there is absolutely no way to keep your old one when you trade in that car.)
In CA, the plate stays with the car - until you specifically transfer that plate to a new car - which is typical with personalized plates.
Does that mean in the Netherlands you can't have personalized plates?
It wouldn't automatically mean that. In the UK (the law on this point might have changed, but I doubt it's much different), there is the "official" number on the plate, and you can substitute a plate with a vanity number in its place, but:
- When you sell / gift / whatever the car to another person, you have to restore the official number plate (not necessarily the original physical plate, but a plate with the official number).
- You can transfer the vanity number to another car on the same basis.
You can sell the plate with the car. People generally don't, but there's no requirement to take the plate off the car first.
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@PleegWat said in Database misstep:
And on top of that, lots of interesting plates are impossible because vowels are not used (though the first few series which had only two letters did include vowels). Also certain letter combinations which may be offensive are not used.
You can always amuse yourself by reading German plates instead, which have no such limitations. Around where I live, you can almost see more of those plates than Dutch ones at the moment.
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@Luhmann Fair point, although that would be rejected by the DVLA on multiple grounds, not least because it doesn't match any existing number plate format.(1) (The modern format in the UK is two letters, two digits, three letters, but past formats were different.)
(1) And it's too long, and it would be deemed offensive.
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@loopback0 OK. It's been a while since I looked at the rules.
On the other hand, the best custom plate I ever saw was a guy I vaguely knew when I was in high school (Union-Endicott, in Endicott NY). He worked nights, and therefore had "Night Shift" encoded in eight letters, the maximum allowed on a NY custom plate.
You might say that it doesn't fit, but he coded it as "NITESHFT". The brain works hard to fill in the missing "I" between the H and the F, but it really, really isn't there.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Database misstep:
Note that your vanity plate must still follow the normal plate format for the age of the vehicle.
No, that's a requirement of just one of the licensing authorities. The other one (who mainly handles vehicle licensing in Northern Ireland) has no such rule (though they follow their own patterns). The relevant law doesn't care as long as the plate doesn't mislead anyone.
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@dkf said in Database misstep:
The relevant law doesn't care as long as the plate doesn't mislead anyone.
Hmm. Must check more often before spouting nonsense.
But of course that's the origin of the rule that if the "true" plate (strictly "registration mark" for the "number" itself) is, in my example, AB53HGT (53 = September 2003 to February 2004), it cannot be customised to (taking my example) FR54STC (54 = September 2004 to February 2005) because it makes the car look a year younger than it is.
Making it look older is allowed, although in certain cases it probably shouldn't, if there was something special about that car in the "older" year.
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@Vault_Dweller Good one, although I saw "NITESHFT" in person, which is what I meant by "I saw"...
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@Steve_The_Cynic And I took that photo myself
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@Vault_Dweller said in Database misstep:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Database misstep:
the best custom plate I ever saw
GP? General Practitioner? I'm not sure I'd want to go to a WTF doctor.
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@jinpa Gauteng Province (or Gangster's Paradise)
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@jinpa said in Database misstep:
@Vault_Dweller said in Database misstep:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Database misstep:
the best custom plate I ever saw
GP? General Practitioner? I'm not sure I'd want to go to a WTF doctor.
My guess is Grand Prix, as in a race to see who can create the most WTFs under a time limit.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in Database misstep:
Making it look older is allowed, although in certain cases it probably shouldn't, if there was something special about that car in the "older" year.
Yeah but you can't hide the car's age just by changing the plate. It's on the registration document, and anyone can check it online.
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@loopback0 said in Database misstep:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Database misstep:
Making it look older is allowed, although in certain cases it probably shouldn't, if there was something special about that car in the "older" year.
Yeah but you can't hide the car's age just by changing the plate. It's on the registration document, and anyone can check it online.
True , but those rules come from a time when "check it online" was definitely not a thing.
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My favorite vanity plate seen is
BASE10
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in Database misstep:
@jinpa said in Database misstep:
@Vault_Dweller said in Database misstep:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Database misstep:
the best custom plate I ever saw
GP? General Practitioner? I'm not sure I'd want to go to a WTF doctor.
My guess is Grand Prix, as in a race to see who can create the most WTFs under a time limit.
"Oh, he made the critical error of switching to IntelliJ on his pit stop. That's going to really hold him back, as recent patches to that product make it much harder to write bad code than using Visual Studio"
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@Gurth said in Database misstep:
amuse yourself by reading German plates
Well, might be. Because they're German, not Dutch or English.
So, when your car was registered in Stade county, the number will start withSTD.
And some one in Neuss (NE) might receiveUKafter the-(Dutchneukmeansfuck). And yes, in Fürth (FÜ), you can getCK-fückis not at all English, is it?
