Chinese Overlords...



  • When the company I work for was bought by a Chinese company out of bankruptcy, I had high hopes that the infusion of cash would change things around.

    Unfortunately, our new Chinese Masters had other ideas. Instead they instituted a series of brutal cuts to benefits which of course raised everyone's moral just as they had hoped...
    But that's not the WTF of the day. We have been using a piece of software called "Agile" for ERP. It doesn't live up to it's name, of course, but that's a WTF for another time too...

    Apparently Agile is considered too expensive and therefore we must change to a new system that will be rolled out later this year named QAD. I've never used QAD and am not involved in the migration process, but today I got an email which read:


    FYI;

    This communication is to notify users that we will be making changes to some Agile fields in preparation for new QAD ERP system that will be implemented later this year. One of those changes is effective now. Due to QAD system requirements, Item descriptions can no longer contain Quotation marks, new lines (carriage return) or lower case letters.

    Users will get the following error message, shown below upon attempting to save an item that has these characters. Please fix your descriptions If you get this error.

    If you have any questions let me know. Thank you for your cooperation.


    Then a nice screenshot was included that included the error message 'Only "QAD Character Set - (No Quotes, Carriage Returns or Lower Case)" values are allowed'. It's nice to see that they're planning ahead for the migration :)

  • sekret PM club

    No lowercase? Dafuq? Is there some database system out there that chokes on lowercase letters or something? Seems like a silly requirement in 2013...

    Oh wait, that explains it. They must be tying it to a system from 1972.



  • @Auction_God said:

    'Only "QAD Character Set - (No Quotes, Carriage Returns or Lower Case)" values are allowed'

    I think a part of me just died inside.



  • I actually just threw up a little, in my mouth. It tastes horrible. I hope you're happy.

    Although, seeing what you have to look forward too, I'm guessing not. My condolences.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @e4tmyl33t said:

    Oh wait, that explains it. They must be tying it to a system from 1972.

    Well, the web page looks pretty shiny. They also offer it as a cloud service.

    OTOH, on the about page, I see, "We founded QAD in 1979 with a vision to develop software exclusively for manufacturing companies." So I guess 1972 isn't that far off. I couldn't find anything that said what QAD stands for, but I'm guessing something like Quality Automotive Delusion.



  •  Run. Fast. Far. Now!



  • @snoofle said:

     Run. Fast. Far. Now!

     

    Beware! If snoofle, off all people, says you should run...

     



  • I, for one, welcome...



  • @boomzilla said:

    anything that said what QAD stands for
    OBLIG: Quick and Dirty


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @e4tmyl33t said:

    No lowercase? Dafuq?
     

    The Chinese people don't have lowercase letters, but they do have 137 words for "snow".



  • @snoofle said:

     Run. Fast. Far. Now!

     

    Yeah, don't even worry about having an alternative set up already. It can only be better than this.

    That's not sarcastic.

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    The Chinese people don't have lowercase letters, but they do have 137 words for "snow".

    Well, at least that's better than the Canadians, who have 341 words for "hockey" but not a single word for "beer".



  • @Auction_God said:

    QAD ERP
     

    Sound like a derpy hiccup.

     

    QADERP!

    bless you



  • @Auction_God said:

    Due to QAD system requirements, Item descriptions can no longer contain Quotation marks, new lines (carriage return) or lower case letters.
    I think your course is clear.  All future office communications from you to them must be in single-line unpunctuated all caps.



  •  Sounds like you need a nu start.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Well, at least that's better than the Canadians, who have 341 words for "hockey" but not a single word for "beer".

    Funny thing: depending one which dialect you refer to, the same word can mean "hockey" or "beer".



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    Well, at least that's better than the Canadians, who have 341 words for "hockey" but not a single word for "beer".

    Funny thing: depending one which dialect you refer to, the same word can mean "hockey" or "beer".

    Just like how in some Canadian dialects "wife" can mean "cantaloupe with a hole drilled in it you put in the microwave for 15 seconds"?



  • @chooks said:

     Sounds like you need a nu start.

    No. This is not funny.


    No.



  • @e4tmyl33t said:

    No lowercase? Dafuq? Is there some database system out there that chokes on lowercase letters or something? Seems like a silly requirement in 2013...

    Oh wait, that explains it. They must be tying it to a system from 1972.

    The database is probably configured with a binary collation, in which case all the query are case-sensitive (including the table names and so on). Using all uppercase is an interesting way to solve the problem. TRWTF is that a lot of ERP rollouts have this issue, including SAP.



    Or maybe it's running on HP3000, which has a "user-friendly" shell which is not case-sensitive but is using the HPUX filesystem, which is case-sensitive... so any file created with one or more lowercase letter in HP3000 is basically lost unless an admin logs in on a csh console and renames it.



    @HP Manual said:


    Be careful! HFS syntax is case sensitive but MPE syntax is not. You can
    type the following command, using MPE syntax in lowercase, and locate
    uppercase FILE1 in YOURGRP in YOURACCT. Try it.

     :LISTFILE file1.yourgrp.youracct 
    

    That's because MPE syntax upshifts everything. But because HFS syntax is
    case sensitive, the following command will not find FILE1 in YOURGRP in
    YOURACCT:


    | |
    | |
    | :LISTFILE /youracct/yourgrp/file1 |
    | A component of the pathname does not exist. (CIWARN 9053) |
    | |


    YOURACCT is not the same as youracct in HFS syntax.

    (MPE is HP3000 O/S and HFS is HPUX filesystem).


    Source



  • I DONT SEE WHAT THE PROBLEM IS I NEVER USE PUNCTUATION ANYWAY WHY WOULD YOU NEED THAT AS FOR CARRIAGE RETURNS WELL THAT JUST SAVES YOU HAVING TO MOVE YOUR EYES MORE CLEARLY THESE CHINESE GUYS KNOW WHATS UP

    Wait, are only quotation marks disallowed? Or can you not use any form of punctuation?



  • OBVIOUSLYWESHOULDALSOREMOVEWHITESPACEANDCARRIAGERETURNSASTHEYONLYTAKEUPMORESPACENEEDLESSLYWITHOUTADDINGANYTHINGTOTHEINFORMATIONCONVEYED



  • @edgsousa said:

    @snoofle said:

     Run. Fast. Far. Now!

     

    Beware! If snoofle, off all people, says you should run...

     

    At the moment, I can probably out-Snoofle Snoofle. He definitely has the long-term win, though!

    I'll put up another segment of WTF-ery soon.



  • @Ronald said:

    @e4tmyl33t said:

    No lowercase? Dafuq? Is there some database system out there that chokes on lowercase letters or something? Seems like a silly requirement in 2013...

    Oh wait, that explains it. They must be tying it to a system from 1972.

    The database is probably configured with a binary collation, in which case all the query are case-sensitive (including the table names and so on). Using all uppercase is an interesting way to solve the problem. TRWTF is that a lot of ERP rollouts have this issue, including SAP.



    Or maybe it's running on HP3000, which has a "user-friendly" shell which is not case-sensitive but is using the HPUX filesystem, which is case-sensitive... so any file created with one or more lowercase letter in HP3000 is basically lost unless an admin logs in on a csh console and renames it.



    @HP Manual said:

    Be careful!  HFS syntax is case sensitive but MPE syntax is not.  You can
    type the following command, using MPE syntax in lowercase, and locate
    uppercase FILE1 in YOURGRP in YOURACCT. Try it.

     :LISTFILE file1.yourgrp.youracct 
    

    That's because MPE syntax upshifts everything. But because HFS syntax is
    case sensitive, the following command will not find FILE1 in YOURGRP in
    YOURACCT:


    | |
    | |
    | :LISTFILE /youracct/yourgrp/file1 |
    | A component of the pathname does not exist. (CIWARN 9053) |
    | |


    YOURACCT is not the same as youracct in HFS syntax.

    (MPE is HP3000 O/S and HFS is HPUX filesystem).


    Source

    Hey, the only operating systems we're allowed to discuss here are Windows, Ubuntu, and Red Hat derivatives.


  • Considered Harmful

    @MiffTheFox said:

    Hey, the only operating systems we're allowed to discuss here are Windows, Ubuntu, and Red Hat derivatives.

    MAC CLASSIC HAD UPPERCASE CHARACTERS BEFORE THEY WERE COOL


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Ronald said:

    @e4tmyl33t said:

    No lowercase? Dafuq? Is there some database system out there that chokes on lowercase letters or something? Seems like a silly requirement in 2013...

    Oh wait, that explains it. They must be tying it to a system from 1972.

    The database is probably configured with a binary collation, in which case all the query are case-sensitive (including the table names and so on). Using all uppercase is an interesting way to solve the problem. TRWTF is that a lot of ERP rollouts have this issue, including SAP.

    Hard to say. I've worked with QAD before, including writing custom code for it. It used to be written in Progress, which certainly didn't have any "upper-case only" restrictions. In fact, a novel feature was that strings were generally treated case-insensitively. IIRC most new installations of QAD (which is actually the company--the product is probably going to be Syteline) use .Net and MS SQL Server.



  • @FrostCat said:

    <snip>

    IIRC most new installations of QAD (which is actually the company--the product is probably going to be Syteline) use .Net and MS SQL Server.

    And SQL Server's default (English) installation is case-insensitive. So you have to really work to make it upper-case only. Sigh...


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