Salesforce and their crazy shenanigans
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I'm currently working on a project using salesforce.com and data integration. Since this story will probably make you want to skim over the rest of the sentence and shout "X? That's the real wtf!" just about every second word, I will include a "Real-WTF-counter(tm)", in an attempt to make people actually read this post.
Okay, so after having the pleasant task of integrating just about every broken data source on the planet, my Project has finally moved to it's final stage of integrating not-well-formed XML(1), Excel-Files with broken fields(2) and the previously used Salesforce database into a second Salesforce database(3) with previously entered data, using Talend Open Studio(4). For those of you who do not know anything about Talend, at some point some people decided that integrating data over code, frameworks and the likes was way to hard, let's make a graphical setup for that. It's mission statement is:
"Talend provides integration solutions that truly scale for any type of integration challenge, any volume of data, and any scope of project, no matter how simple or complex.
Only Talend’s highly scalable data, application and business process integration platform enables organizations to effectively leverage all of their information assets. Talend unites integration projects and technologies to dramatically accelerate the time-to-value for the business, effectively enabling Integration at any scale."
What they actually made was an eclipse-based GUI so slow, it takes more than double the time my OS and about 3 application servers take to start. It won't open projects without admin permission, but will not ask for any, and never inform you about needing them. You enter a data source, a target, depending on your setup or file type you may have to enter about a bazillion filter settings, ("Think of all the time we'll save with this graphical tool that still requires you to hardcode an XPath statement if you want anything out of an XML-file") enter a map, which determines the mapping between target and data source, click on auto-mapping, watch it die in Flames even though both end have the same data types, the same field names and the same field length, map everything graphically by dragging lines from a to b, while the GUI tries it's best to ignore your input, then start the job which inputs data from a to b.
The previouly used data sources were: a e-commerce platform based on PHP and MySQL used by nobody, have fun searching for the official documentation, called Oxid (5), a Enhanced ERM-diagram shadily implemented in MySQL-workbench, with no knowledge which features were meant as some kind of insane feature creep ("inheritance? Why not?")(6), and several XSLT-generated XML-Files.
I have now used Talend's own expression dialect for selecting data, Talend's option of sometimes straight up letting me inject Java code into... something?, have worked around the fact that salesforce straight up doesn't know 1:1-relations (it involves custom triggers, a custom SQL-dialect for selecting objects and a Java fork)(7), have become the biggest user of salesforce's data loader(8), (really! They send me an e-mail and everything) which is needed if you ever want to delete more than one record and probably reactively tied myself into the Kennedy assassination. I'm tired, you guys.
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Talend is one of the most Java-y things I've ever had the misfortune to use. Condolences.
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We understand your pain, but I have to point out the WTF counter is a bit low. Talend could easily have had 5 Real-WTFs™ on its own if only half the description is true, leaving aside the quoted dronespeak that induces genocidal tendencies.
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I think I counted a lot more than 8 TRWTFs while reading your post. In the interest of my sanity, I won't try reading it again and marking them. Good luck.
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@TGV said:
but I have to point out the WTF counter is a bit low
Yes, in between #4 and #5 he skipped over a big section that contains several WTFs.
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@El_Heffe said:
@TGV said:
but I have to point out the WTF counter is a bit low
Yes, in between #4 and #5 he skipped over a big section that contains several WTFs.
So, what your saying is, the WTF counter is TRWTF?
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@CodeNinja said:
@El_Heffe said:
@TGV said:
but I have to point out the WTF counter is a bit low
Yes, in between #4 and #5 he skipped over a big section that contains several WTFs.
So, what your saying is, the WTF counter is TRWTF?He could have marked WTFs with a simple control character then use Talend to replace those characters with an incremental field.
