5 + 5 = 9...DUH, MORON...



  • Got a frantic call from a customer this morning saying their Case Tracking system was broken and needed to be urgently fixed. Out of the blue the registration ID's were incrementing by 5 instead of by the standard 1, so user saved a registration, ID assigned was 134555, then when he saved again the ID was 134560, then 134565 etc. Problem started at 9:30 that morning. 

    First thing we suspected was that there were multiple users logging reqistrations and the increment of 5 was just an unlikely probability, but they assured us that no, there was only 1 person logging registrations (Mr. X). After a quick sanity check of the code which we knew was properly unit tested and was unlikely to be the cause of the problem, and not having remote access we jumped in a taxi to go onsite to try and address the problem.

    Onsite we did a select on all registrations created that day and lo and behold, all ID's were properly incremented with unique, valid registrations. Starting to get a bit pissed off we asked had they checked for the missing ID's in the system with the search function - eg. 134556, or 134557. No apparently they didn't because they were data entry people, not data searchers, so was outside the scope of their job description.

    We then asked did amiller, dmerrick and gsmith per chance work for this organisation, and if so what were they doing this morning? After the customer contact spoke to Ms. Miller and asked her what she was doing that morning the penny suddenly dropped with them...

    I'm sure you've guessed it - there were 4/5 people logging registrations. While we were looking at the select result, we noticed that the gap between ID's registered by Mr. X was NOT always 5 - they were 4, 5, 4, 3 etc. So not only could he not search, it appears he could also not count. MORON.

    Here's hoping MR. X gets invoiced for the cost of his stupidity, or athe very least no bonus, but it's the public sector so I won't hold my breath...



  • wait, what?

    I'm not quite sure I understand what's going on. There were 4/5 people logging registrations meaning that 4-5 registrations were happening for each person, or what? Shouldn't there be constraints, etc. preventing registrations for the same person?



  • [quote user="Volmarias"]wait, what?

    I'm not quite sure I understand what's going on. There were 4/5 people logging registrations meaning that 4-5 registrations were happening for each person, or what? Shouldn't there be constraints, etc. preventing registrations for the same person?
    [/quote]

     System has unique, auto-incrementing ids..... person claims they're the only person on the system and the ids are incrementing by 5 every time. Support staff goes on-site to discover that there were 4-5 people entering records, not one as the customer had claimed, and the ids were incrementing by 4-5 each time since each person was saving records.

     Basically, system does what it's supposed to do but the user has never seen it before so they cry foul and call tech support without bothering to do the most basic of triaging themselves (ie, standing up in their cubicle and asking if anyone else is using the system)



  • Ah, that was the piece I was missing. Thanks!


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