Ray was not just a recent addition to the development team. She was also a recent grad just getting started in her career. As a result, she was eager to glean as much knowledge as she could from any source she could find. She poured over all of the documentation provided to her by her team lead. She read the wiki (because that's the storehouse of communal knowledge for every team), reviewed the code and examined the diagrams of the data models used within the application.

All was going swimmingly...until she came across the following.

She hunkered down, trying to figure out what going on. The names of the tables really didn't help out much. I mean, sure. There is a Header table. With fifteen variations on the fSID field. And there are a whole bunch of SetSizes tables. Each of which is...er...nicely numbered. Because the distinction between tblSetSizes_13 and tblSetSizes_6 is readily apparent. Right???

And to top it off, notice how the names of the SetSizes tables have been aligned with the fSID fields. So that fSID1 lines up with the tblSetSizes_2. All in the name of avoiding confusion by the developer.

After spending enough time to ensure that the purpose of the diagram wasn't something blinding obvious (or opaquely obvious), she walked over to her team lead's desk.

"Ahhhh. I see you found it.", he said.

"Found it??"

"Yes. My masterpiece. I spent more than a few hours on that diagram getting everything defined and lined up properly"

Ray had a confused look on her face.

"I even had to set the size of the tables so they would all fit on the screen."

"Set...the size??"

"Yes. That's why I named them like I did."

"I don't think I understand. What is this structure for?"

"It's not for anything. It's art."

Ray paused. "Art?"

"Yes. I like the way it looked. The symmetry. The layout and contrasting colors. I like it, so, I kept the diagram around to preserve it".

"Okay. Thanks. I guess", said Ray.

"No problem. Come back any time you need to have something explained."

Ray retreated back to her desk. Afraid of what she might find, Ray didn't really have the enthusiasm to dig into more of the project code. Or database diagrams. But she did start to think about how long she would have to stay in this job before it wouldn't look bad on her resume if she left. Or maybe she should just start looking now. By using a little artistic license, she could just pretend this job never actually happened.

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