Third party integration... just... why... what?
I've been involved in a lot of integration projects, my most recent with a large supermarket chain.
Some common themes I've come across in 3rd party integration
Around 9 times out of 10, the 3rd party doesn't know how their own system works.
Their documentation that they ask you to implement to is a lie.
They will not admit when a bug is a bug and they will not fix issues.
Their support is full of non technical idiots.
They can't get meaningful or even basic error reporting from their own system.
They will make changes, breaking your fragile implementation to their brittle spec and then deny anything has changed.
I could go on.
My current dilemma
The current integration is a simple flat file XML exchange based on an XML standard, yet despite producing files to spec, the third party cannot tell me why the files are failing.
First of all - I wrote the integration to spec. The spec mentioned a test mode and I made sure to build this facet into the integration so that we could easily switch into production mode.
I put failsafes in using common sense - no test file would be accepted into a production system, and vice-versa.
Upon completion, I spoke to my contact in order to get the ball rolling.
"So, what steps do we need to take to start testing this, I assume you will send files in test mode until we are happy it's working?"
"oh... we don't have a test mode"
I knew at that point that it was going to be a bumpy road.
Next, my contact took several weeks to come back with an answer on whether the files were even getting into their system, despite me screenshotting and even downloading a copy of the files I'd uploaded to their FTP to prove that they should be able to see them.
My contact ignored questions in emails I sent, answering mostly with pointless questions "can you send some more test files" (shouldn't we be looking at why the previous files went AWOL??)
After weeks and weeks of messing about, project way over budget due to constant communication, I've still not found an issue with the files I'm sending - the most recent email was from my contact telling me that they had provided a corrected file based on one of my original files.
I ran a text compare - both files were identical (apart from spacing).
I give up.
Has anyone else suffered from this nightmare?