Comment On The X-Data Specialist

Oh how I'd love to see the rest of that database...if only to laugh my ass off at the creator...

First!?

The headphones!  They do nothing!

Record 1 of 91318.  I'm guessing this is the only table in the database.  Nice.

Nice!

So what does it do?

    This looks very familar, I think he stole our idea as this is exactly how we did our online store -- using asp with an MDB file.

My guess: The fields store binary numbers using blank space for 0 and X for 1.

Ooookay he's planned for the future as well.
Just in case the fields end up being toooo short, we could use 'y' and 'z' or noughts.
WTF!

Digitalbath:

Record 1 of 91318.  I'm guessing this is the only table in the database.  Nice.

Given the table's name, I HIGHLY doubt it.

Digitalbath:

Record 1 of 91318.  I'm guessing this is the
only table in the database.  Nice.

With a name like BRK07X, it's
the only table?

Not that I have any real data to contradict you with, of course. Looks
like some sort of faux-bitmap, each record represents a single order in
various categories (DATAn).

But... "Nice" still applies.

The next WTF would be an implementation of the algorithm to zip this data using LZW and unzip it during runtime.
Oo and there would be the genius who would recommend a sparse matrix data structure to hold those XTFs.
Brillant. Pure x-tasy.

Our first x-rated WTF ...

Anonymous:

Digitalbath:

Record 1 of 91318.  I'm guessing this is the only table in the database.  Nice.

Given the table's name, I HIGHLY doubt it.

You don't name your db tables with 3 random letters then the last 2 digits of the upcoming year and then an "X"?  Weird.  I thought that was standard....</joke>

Good point.

I'm sure the DataN fields are byte-mapped text fields.  I have seen something like this before...thought it was only one field...

--Jim

Heh.  I love the box there where it says "type a question for help."  I would type



WTF?

Battleship + Tic-Tac-Toe = Transaction?

The original system (this system was modelled after) used punched cards; x is where the holes were.

My first thought: abacus

ammoQ:

The original system (this system was modelled after) used punched cards; x is where the holes were.

x is where the holes were (or not)

captcha: dichotomy

Bah! This is OBVIOUSLY not a WTF! Anyone smarter than a peice of lint could OBVIOUSLY tell you how this works! The table name is OBVIOUSLY the Backwards Relationship Katalogue for item group 7X! The ID's are OBVIOUSLY the ID numbers of the items. The columns numbered DATA1-DATA52 are OBVIOUSLY for all 52 weeks of the year, and the x's in them OBVIOUSLY represent the day of the week for the item was purchase. Another table OBVIOUSLY holds the quantity of items purchased (for apparent reasons). OBVIOUSLY the buisness owner was trying to optimize his inventory, isn't it OBVIOUS!

<quote>I'll leave it as an exersize for the reader to immagine how this point-of-sale system operated.</quote>



Are you sure it was a point-of-sale system?  P.O.S. has another meaning....



- Dr. A

ammoQ:

The original system (this system was modelled after) used punched cards; x is where the holes were.

That would be my guess as well.  I've seen these types of tables on AS400's so I'll say the table was just imported from the primary system.

Anonymous:

Heh.  I love the box there where it says "type a question for help."  I would type

WTF?

The WTF is not that MS Access was used as a database, it is the table structure that is the WTF. Well, your comment was funnier and a bigger WTF than Alex's post.

GoatCheez:

Bah! This is OBVIOUSLY not a WTF! Anyone smarter than a peice of lint could OBVIOUSLY tell you how this works! The table name is OBVIOUSLY the Backwards Relationship Katalogue for item group 7X! The ID's are OBVIOUSLY the ID numbers of the items. The columns numbered DATA1-DATA52 are OBVIOUSLY for all 52 weeks of the year, and the x's in them OBVIOUSLY represent the day of the week for the item was purchase. Another table OBVIOUSLY holds the quantity of items purchased (for apparent reasons). OBVIOUSLY the buisness owner was trying to optimize his inventory, isn't it OBVIOUS!

/me listens closely
/me dies

Alex Papadimoulis:

I'll leave it as an exersize for the reader to immagine how this point-of-sale system operated.

Yes, that's quite a P.O.S. system they've got there.

The real WTF is the last line of this post:

"I'll leave it as an exersize for the reader to immagine how this point-of-sale system operated."

GoatCheez:

Bah! This is OBVIOUSLY not a WTF! Anyone smarter than a peice of lint could OBVIOUSLY tell you how this works! The table name is OBVIOUSLY the Backwards Relationship Katalogue for item group 7X! The ID's are OBVIOUSLY the ID numbers of the items. The columns numbered DATA1-DATA52 are OBVIOUSLY for all 52 weeks of the year, and the x's in them OBVIOUSLY represent the day of the week for the item was purchase. Another table OBVIOUSLY holds the quantity of items purchased (for apparent reasons). OBVIOUSLY the buisness owner was trying to optimize his inventory, isn't it OBVIOUS!

DATA52 ?
My xoxxles!! They dont work.

I used to do stuff like this in my word processer (AppleWorks) though I was drawing ASCII art rather than trying to manage a business.  And I was about 14.  Other than that, it's the same.  Not so big a WTF.

Alex Papadimoulis:

As an independent consultant, Steve G. sees his fair share bizarre, homebrewed applications that somehow manage to run a business.

After de-anonymizing this, we'll find that Steve G. (not his real name) is not an independent consultant at all, but works for a major software company.  The system in question is not an Access database, either, but a snippet of UI handling code in Visual Basic.  Instead of x's and spaces, the code contains the usual VB statements and misnamed variables (not much more legible than the x's, granted).  Of course there is a WTF in the original, but it's impossible to tell what it is, because the submission has been fictionalized by an unknown amount along an unspecified number of axes, sort of like this:

             W
T------------|----------F

Yes, I'm still annoyed that Alex refuses to even hint how much of each posting is true, if any, and how much is fictional.

"

... the exception being that Steve told the business owner that he was on his own. I'll leave it as an exersize for the reader to immagine how this point-of-sale system operated.

"

L2Spell, imo...

minesweeper! YAY!!!

Alex Papadimoulis:

I'll leave it as an exersize for the reader to immagine how this point-of-sale system operated.

I submit that it is more likely that Steve G. nor Alex wanted to actually figure out how this mess worked.

/captcha : captcha

/me faints and goes into epileptic shock

heck, i'm tempted to press the Report Abuse button, if that's not the most clear case of abusing us, I don't know what else is...

I have 20+ years of database work.  Started with INFO, DB2 &
dBASE II.  "Classically" trained in database theory.  Read
Codd & Date once for fun.  I've been looking at this now for
more time then I care to admit and I don't have a clue about how this
works.



There needs to be a category beyond Daily WTF.  Something like Uber-WTF.

pjsson:

Anonymous:

Heh.  I love the box there where it says "type a question for help."  I would type

WTF?

The WTF is not that MS Access was used as a database, it is the table structure that is the WTF. Well, your comment was funnier and a bigger WTF than Alex's post.

Begging to differ, but using MS Access in a production system is a solid WTF. The table structure merits a WTF too, of course.

If you laid all of the punch cards on a wooden table and photographed them, then you could store an image of each card in single field.

White space should always be meaningful.

x                  x      x   x   x      x   x   x

   x      x    x              x           x   x   x 

      x      x                 x           x 

 

I figured it out!

Anybody noticed the creative ID column?
I've got to start using ids like those: last char - 0-9, second last - A-Z, ... I can only guess that third char is from this set: [!@#$%^&*()]

I should probably start using chars from local charset for next ones... that would make some unique ids like:

4, T5, %G2, A&L2, ðE*T0, ...

:)

A Meltdown WTF?

stevekj:

Alex Papadimoulis:

As an independent consultant, Steve G. sees his fair share bizarre, homebrewed applications that somehow manage to run a business.

After de-anonymizing this, we'll find that Steve G. (not his real name) is not an independent consultant at all, but works for a major software company.  The system in question is not an Access database, either, but a snippet of UI handling code in Visual Basic.  Instead of x's and spaces, the code contains the usual VB statements and misnamed variables (not much more legible than the x's, granted).  Of course there is a WTF in the original, but it's impossible to tell what it is, because the submission has been fictionalized by an unknown amount along an unspecified number of axes, sort of like this:

             W
T------------|----------F

Yes, I'm still annoyed that Alex refuses to even hint how much of each posting is true, if any, and how much is fictional.

take a deep breath, now take a second to realize what a tight @ss you are. Just have fun with it. Who cares how real it is?

You are that guy that watches an action movie and explains to everyone why physics would not allow the car to do what it just did.

This is easy...

x marks the spot.

GoatCheez:

Bah! This is OBVIOUSLY not a WTF! Anyone smarter than a peice of lint could OBVIOUSLY tell you how this works! The table name is OBVIOUSLY the Backwards Relationship Katalogue for item group 7X! The ID's are OBVIOUSLY the ID numbers of the items. The columns numbered DATA1-DATA52 are OBVIOUSLY for all 52 weeks of the year, and the x's in them OBVIOUSLY represent the day of the week for the item was purchase.

Looking at the horizontal scroll-bar I'd say there are about 23 columns in this table, not 52.

Admittedly as a step in understanding this application that's about as useful as climbing a step-ladder on the way to the moon. This is a first-class WTF.

byte_lancer:

ammoQ:

The original system (this system was modelled after) used punched cards; x is where the holes were.

x is where the holes were (or not)

captcha: dichotomy

It's a Bool, not a boolean - think: File Not Found

This is one frame in the simulation game "life", that the "brother's sister-in-law's mother's second-cousin's son" had to implement for his beginning CS class.  This is the starting position, and he iterated through 91318 cycles before he ran out of disk space.

Then he printed all of them out on the old dot-matrix, peeled off the sprocket strips, and handed the pile in.

This is so bad you almost have to wonder if it was done on purpose to sabotage the company.   Maybe Steve used to beat his brother's sister-in-law's mother's second-cousin's son when he was little.

Anonymous:

"

... the exception being that Steve told the business owner that he was on his own. I'll leave it as an exersize for the reader to immagine how this point-of-sale system operated.

"

L2Spell, imo...

I think the misspelling of xersixe was quite intentional.

Captcha: SomethingWhichCanBeCleverlyRelatedToTheSubject (not).

Anonymous:

stevekj:

Alex Papadimoulis:

As an independent consultant, Steve G. sees his fair share bizarre, homebrewed applications that somehow manage to run a business.

After de-anonymizing this, we'll find that Steve G. (not his real name) is not an independent consultant at all, but works for a major software company.  The system in question is not an Access database, either, but a snippet of UI handling code in Visual Basic.  Instead of x's and spaces, the code contains the usual VB statements and misnamed variables (not much more legible than the x's, granted).  Of course there is a WTF in the original, but it's impossible to tell what it is, because the submission has been fictionalized by an unknown amount along an unspecified number of axes, sort of like this:

             W
T------------|----------F

Yes, I'm still annoyed that Alex refuses to even hint how much of each posting is true, if any, and how much is fictional.

take a deep breath, now take a second to realize what a tight @ss you are. Just have fun with it. Who cares how real it is?

You are that guy that watches an action movie and explains to everyone why physics would not allow the car to do what it just did.

And you missed his obvious sarcasm in the WTF ASCII graph. . .

Anonymous:

stevekj:

Yes, I'm still annoyed that Alex refuses to even hint how much of each posting is true, if any, and how much is fictional.

take a deep breath, now take a second to realize what a tight @ss you are. Just have fun with it. Who cares how real it is?

I care actually. Anyone with a sufficiently twisted mind can make up daft code for a joke. The very raison d'etre of this site is that it is real production code. And I (still) believe Alex when he says it is - but there have indeed been one or two cases where he seems to have got carried away with massaging the introductory story, which is a shame.

Alex Papadimoulis:

As an independent consultant, Steve G. sees his fair share bizarre, homebrewed applications that somehow manage to run a business. The story usually goes: the business owner's brother's sister-in-law's mother's second-cousin's son is a complete whiz and does this sort of thing all the time, and would be happy to whip together a quick system for them, and then a few months later, the business owner desperately calls Steve to try to fix the horrible mess. Today's example is different with only one exception ...

... the exception being that Steve told the business owner that he was on his own. I'll leave it as an exersize for the reader to immagine how this point-of-sale system operated.

It should be obvious to even the dimmest bulb that this was written by someone that hates men (female chromosomes are x, male are y - notice all the Y's have been erased?)