Comment On XML Upgrade

Is the WTF that they're using JPG instead of PNG? ;)

A bit scary that this is their "best".

Waits for the thread to be derailed by grammar nazis...

I guess he now knows not to expect too much. They said they'd do their best.. Their best just isn't good enough.

This story is comprised of very humorous material.

Jesus:

This story is comprised of very humorous material.

I am flabbergasted by the exuberance of your precocity.
Your delectation in argot is quite, shall we say, beauteous.
De rigeur, no doubt for such a recondite individual such as you.

The true WTF is that they should have used JSON:
{ IMAGE_SET: "/p604332/front.jpg,/p604332/back.jpg,/p604332/back-alt.jpg,/p604332/in-use.jpg" }

Far more efficient ... especially in this case! ;)

Huge Jarse:

Jesus:

This story is comprised of very humorous material.

I am flabbergasted by the exuberance of your precocity.
Your delectation in argot is quite, shall we say, beauteous.
De rigeur, no doubt for such a recondite individual such as you.

That sounds like somebody who ate a dictionary and farted.

Duh, where's the file size and caption information?
<IMAGE_SET value="/p604332/front_running shoe_130K.jpg,/p604332/back.jpg,/p604332/back-alt_running shoe_126K.jpg,/p604332/in-use_running shoe in use_34K.jpg" />

Huge Jarse:

De rigeur, no doubt for such a recondite individual such as you.

We need a comma after "no doubt", please.

Sorry I can't sign this "Grammar Nazi" -- I'm logged in.

This is the fault of the requester for not following standard IT processes. The company was anticipating a change in the requirements and the changes never came.

Is the WTF that he wanted it in XML?

Huge Jarse:

Huge Jarse:

Jesus:

This story is comprised of very humorous material.

I am flabbergasted by the exuberance of your precocity.
Your delectation in argot is quite, shall we say, beauteous.
De rigeur, no doubt for such a recondite individual such as you.

That sounds like somebody who ate a dictionary and farted.

Have you read yesterday's exchange about the proper use of the word "comprise?"

Huge Jarse:

Jesus:

This story is comprised of very humorous material.

I am flabbergasted by the exuberance of your precocity.
Your delectation in argot is quite, shall we say, beauteous.
De rigeur, no doubt for such a recondite individual such as you.

You missed a comma.

Hey hey hey, its simplicity. Why would you want attributes, sub-elements, attributes, and more sub-elements, when you can have the state-of-the-art super high-speed ultra efficient... the "parser's parser" if you will... Comma Separated Values!

I see no F here. They are changing one part of a process and it still has to work with the other parts. Once they have changed this part to use XML and the QA is done and all parties are satisfied that the new process works, then they can extend it to include the other data that they need.

All they did was add the xml tags around the text they already computed. It took them weeks to do this? Where is this job -- it sure beats the hectic schedule around here.

Right, and then completely change their code from parsing a long string to parsing XML elements. It's just a tiny change, why make it work that way the first time?

NeoMojo:

Is the WTF that they're using JPG instead of PNG? ;)

If they're photographs, then JPG is better. So there!

rbowes:

NeoMojo:

Is the WTF that they're using JPG instead of PNG? ;)

If they're photographs, then JPG is better. So there!

Horray! No grammar nazis! (Well, very few, anyway.)

Now we're back to good old, trusty, file-format nazis...

Incidentally, is it just me, or is calling someone you don't know a "nazi" just a tad offensive?

The RealWTF is that the element tag name exceeds the maximum number of characters (five) and is comprised of an underscore, so it's not valid XML.

It's also missing the declaration and document root, and the content-type of the response is probably not set as text/xml, either.

There's a maximum tag name specification? Where?

I'm curious as to whether they actually answered correctly, here. If all he asked is "if they could send back more data", and they answered by wrapping the result in an answer that allows them to "send back more data", then

"it just involved a HTTP Request with a product number in the querystring" [...] "that same request now returned this..."

They probably need to forward the guy some instructions on how to -ask- for the caption and such. Maybe he needs an HTTP request with '?product_number=XYZ&caption=yes&(...)'.

Freddy Bob:

I see no F here.

You still see a "What the...?" then?

Willie:

There's a maximum tag name specification? Where?

That seems to be an in-joke of rather poor taste (considering how many others it's genuinely confusing). There is no practical maximum tag name; the spec doesn't provide a limit, at least. Some implementations or support utilities might limit you to 64 or 80 characters (or bytes), but even these are well beyond practical.

Willie:

There's a maximum tag name specification? Where?

I thought everyone knew that..

See http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/XML-Koan-from-the-Fourth-Dimension.aspx from a few days ago.


(pay attention at the back there)

Bob:

Huge Jarse:

De rigeur, no doubt for such a recondite individual such as you.

You missed a comma.

I can't believe two people here picked up on the comma, but no-one noticed the redundant extra "such" at the end of the sentence. Call yourself fascists? Pathetic.

confused:

Is the WTF that he wanted it in XML?

I hope so. Out of my semi-rational XML hatred, I would have made about the same change.

obediah:

I hope so. Out of my semi-rational XML hatred, I would have made about the same change.

I have the same loathing. I can think of about 3 billion easier, quicker & more efficient ways to return the desired data than to use XML..

It looks to me like more a bad feature request. They probably DID do their best. It probably took a few weeks just because it was a low priority task, and there's probably no one there who knows XML - why should they, it's an awful system so why should anyone have to suffer learning about it?

Now, if they returned
/p604332/front.jpg,12612,75,43,A Big Shoe
/p604332/back.jpg,25462,120,60,The Back of A Big Shoe

tha would be far more efficient, easier to code, and far quicker to generate and parse. If Steve had been sensible and asked for something like that, he'd probably have got it, as the developer would have spent his time doing the job rather than having to try to learn about something that should never have been invented.

NeoMojo:

Is the WTF that they're using JPG instead of PNG? ;)

A bit scary that this is their "best".

Waits for the thread to be derailed by grammar nazis...

No, I think The Real WTF(tm) is that everything is in a single tag. They technically made the process XML-based, but they did not conform to the "spirit" of XML, which would have each image and its data in its own tag(s).

I see this sort of thing a lot. It allows everyone to pat each other on the back for using XML without really having to tear apart the system. It's just another example of how XML is a typically meaningless, open-ended modern standard. "XML data" means almost as little as "SCSI cable."

Jerome:

...the redundant extra "such"...

*cough*

Jerome:

I can't believe two people here picked up on the comma, but no-one noticed the redundant extra "such" at the end of the sentence. Call yourself fascists? Pathetic.

We were sticking to the subject: comma delimiting. Such is the way of such things.

Well, that's XML for ya!

Paul:

Now, if they returned
/p604332/front.jpg,12612,75,43,A Big Shoe
/p604332/back.jpg,25462,120,60,The Back of A Big Shoe

tha would be far more efficient, easier to code, and far quicker to generate and parse.

Until someone enters a caption with a comma in it of course. So, maybe you could put the fields in quote-marks; and have a format for escaping quote-marks.

Or maybe you could separate with some wacky character like '¦', in the hope that no-one will type that one.

Or maybe you could put them in key-value pairs with well-defined quoting and escaping - i.e. XML attributes. I really don't see what people find so offensive about that.

Paul:

It looks to me like more a bad feature request ... there's probably no one there who knows XML

Wow, yeah, because heaven forbid they should come back to him and say "we can give you the information you asked for, but we might not do it in XML, is that OK?" - because that would obviously have been far less useful to him than not actually changing the information they returned in any way!

Freddy Bob:

I see no F here. They are changing one part of a process and it still has to work with the other parts. Once they have changed this part to use XML and the QA is done and all parties are satisfied that the new process works, then they can extend it to include the other data that they need.

Ditto - seems you have to start somewhere. The RealWTF(tm) is not recognizing this as progress.

From someone complaining about redundant words, the extra "extra" there seems a bit ironic...

real_aardvark:

rbowes:

NeoMojo:

Is the WTF that they're using JPG instead of PNG? ;)

If they're photographs, then JPG is better. So there!

Horray! No grammar nazis! (Well, very few, anyway.)

Now we're back to good old, trusty, file-format nazis...

Incidentally, is it just me, or is calling someone you don't know a "nazi" just a tad offensive?

Just a tad... But what the heck we had such a good time, back in the 1950's, calling people we didn't know "communists". Let's celebrate the rise of neo-McCarthyism.
<sarcasm/>

It's also missing the declaration and document root, and the content-type of the response is probably not set as text/xml, either.

The declaration is optional, and the document root is IMAGE_SET. (yes, an XML document consisting of a single empty element is well-formed)

NotanEnglishMajor:

real_aardvark:

rbowes:

NeoMojo:

Is the WTF that they're using JPG instead of PNG? ;)

If they're photographs, then JPG is better. So there!

Horray! No grammar nazis! (Well, very few, anyway.)

Now we're back to good old, trusty, file-format nazis...

Incidentally, is it just me, or is calling someone you don't know a "nazi" just a tad offensive?

Just a tad... But what the heck we had such a good time, back in the 1950's, calling people we didn't know "communists". Let's celebrate the rise of neo-McCarthyism.
<sarcasm/>

No no, that's not the crowd shouting 'nazi', the neo-McCarthyists are calling people 'terrists'.

Paul:

obediah:

I hope so. Out of my semi-rational XML hatred, I would have made about the same change.

I have the same loathing. I can think of about 3 billion easier, quicker & more efficient ways to return the desired data than to use XML..

It looks to me like more a bad feature request. They probably DID do their best. It probably took a few weeks just because it was a low priority task, and there's probably no one there who knows XML - why should they, it's an awful system so why should anyone have to suffer learning about it?

Now, if they returned
/p604332/front.jpg,12612,75,43,A Big Shoe
/p604332/back.jpg,25462,120,60,The Back of A Big Shoe

tha would be far more efficient, easier to code, and far quicker to generate and parse. If Steve had been sensible and asked for something like that, he'd probably have got it, as the developer would have spent his time doing the job rather than having to try to learn about something that should never have been invented.

This would be easier to parse, except for the fact that Actionscript lacks any kind of Regex support. It does have fairly straightfoward XML support. Flash is a non-stop WTF.

Would it have killed him to have parsed and sent the requests for the images?

Or, you know, they could've sent the data he requested.

I've seen the same pattern of behavior with different technology. A client sends a picture as a JPG, when a vector-based version is really required for glitch-free resizing. I explain the difference and ask for a vector-based format like PDF or Adobe Illustrator. The client then sends a PDF. What's inside the PDF? You guessed it: original JPG.

At that point, I have to balance getting the job done versus spending a full hour explaining the difference again versus insulting the client by asking to speak to a competent person.

When the client gets it right on the first try, I jump for joy!

Matthias Bruch via Alex Papadimoulis:

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Nein

Robert Hanson:

All they did was add the xml tags around the text they already computed. It took them weeks to do this? Where is this job -- it sure beats the hectic schedule around here.

That is the true WTF...

I guess adding xml tags meant that they needed to do the following:
1) Figure out what XML is... i mean its GOT to stand for something...
2) Figure out why would anyone want to use xml (thats 2 days of work right there)
3) Figure out what XML is... (i mean once they figured out that people use it they have to re-figure out what xml is because the definition they got in step 1 was obviously flawed) (2 more days)
4) Figure out how to convert CSV to XML... (15 minutes)
5) Implement step 4 (3 days)
6) Bug test.... o crap no time, lets just shove the old result into 5 and we will have something that does not need testing YAY WOO WERE DONE!

It just goes to show:
If you don't really need it, don't ask for it!
If you really need it, DIY!

Freddy Bob:

I see no F here. They are changing one part of a process and it still has to work with the other parts. Once they have changed this part to use XML and the QA is done and all parties are satisfied that the new process works, then they can extend it to include the other data that they need.

Except that the new version isn't backwards-compatible: anything expecting the old output but receiving the new would think there was an image called '<IMAGE_SET value="/p604332/front.jpg' (sure, the old format's in there somewhere, but you've still got to rewrite the receiving code to know where)

And nor is it forwards-compatible: since all the images are still in one comma-separated list, there's no way of adding extra information without completely restructuring it. Unless you add a <CAPTION_LIST...> tag, with another comma-separated list that happens to be in the same order... 8-/

The Real WTF is that they're not using AJAX.

--doc0tis

The real WTF is that Steve had access to all of the information he needed to begin with.

1. File size is trivial to determine once you have grabbed the file.

2. The heading would come directly from the product information he already has. Product Name anyone?

3. Captions can be pulled directly from the file names.

The vendor's programmers more than likely knew this and coded to the only remaining part of the new spec: deliver it in XML.

real_aardvark:

rbowes:

NeoMojo:

Is the WTF that they're using JPG instead of PNG? ;)

If they're photographs, then JPG is better. So there!

Horray! No grammar nazis! (Well, very few, anyway.)

Now we're back to good old, trusty, file-format nazis...

Incidentally, is it just me, or is calling someone you don't know a "nazi" just a tad offensive?

No more or less offensive than wearing a hat in a restaurant.

clively:

The real WTF is that Steve had access to all of the information he needed to begin with.

1. File size is trivial to determine once you have grabbed the file.

2. The heading would come directly from the product information he already has. Product Name anyone?

3. Captions can be pulled directly from the file names.

The vendor's programmers more than likely knew this and coded to the only remaining part of the new spec: deliver it in XML.

Well, I'm certainly not going to defend the XML bit. That would be absurd.

However, in the spirit of trying to make sense of this mess:

1. Oh look, this JPEG is encoded at 100% of 16 bazillion colour depth. I don't think I want to download that one.

2. Eh? Are you suggesting that there is an immutable one-to-one relationship, on both sides of this transaction, between Product Name and Product Number?

3.Caption: "front", "back", "back-alt", "in-use". Elegant.

4. You forgot the "etc."

5. The vendor is presumably trying to sell something through the "in-house" system. One of my mates is currently in the position of the "in-house" system, selling real estate, as it happens. (No problem there at the moment...) It might be a good idea to supply the information required in a half-way sensible package ... otherwise, your sales mysteriously dry up. Screw up, as here, and you'll meet delays and resistance from the "in-house" programmers, if not from the "in-house" bosses themselves.

That said, this is still a monumental WTF. Ludicrous requirements, insane choice of technology, absurd implementation of said technology. Have I missed anything?

clively:

The vendor's programmers more than likely knew this...

Just felt like repeating that. You sure your moniker shouldn't be "Basilly?" You are (on the face of what we see in the OP) correct in that there's no actual written set of requirements -- which there should be -- but since when is it up to some unknown set of half-witted junior programmers to re-interpret a request for "Make it XML" into "Add eighteen characters to the front and three to the back?"

And don't tell me that this isn't the decision of an unknown set of half-witted junior programmers. It damn well reeks of that.

Shill:

real_aardvark:

Incidentally, is it just me, or is calling someone you don't know a "nazi" just a tad offensive?

No more or less offensive than wearing a hat in a restaurant.

But what if the hat is a yarmulke?

(Just in case you didn't get the "someone you don't know" bit.)

FredSaw:

Huge Jarse:

De rigeur, no doubt for such a recondite individual such as you.

We need a comma after "no doubt", please.

Sorry I can't sign this "Grammar Nazi" -- I'm logged in.

You can, however, change the subject.

Well, an enormous number of posts on this site do just that; but you get my drift. Speaking of which, Jarse is misquoting Milligan egregiously. I mean, the whole point of the joke was that the first name was "Hugh."

And did you know that "Biggar" is a semi-popular name in Scotland, and that there is, or was, a Reverend Biggar Balls?