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Admin
Crashing the mission-critical system: thousands worth of lost work.
Crashing it without getting in trouble: priceless.
Admin
Makes you wonder how MSAccess got to be the platform of choice
Admin
The real WTF:
If the company who programmed this monstrosity could foot a random $285,000 bill, why didn't they put in enough money for a new programming team to write a new application that wasn't such a pile of shit? $285k is enough for one good senior level programmer and 3-4 average to newbie levels for drone work. Problem solved?
Admin
TRWTF is that his company has only one customer, and it's a US auto manufacturer. Better think about diversifying a bit!
Admin
Admin
And why the burning place where devils "live" did it deadlock when just exporting a table? Is Access supposed to do that?
Admin
Multiple requests + Access
Admin
You had me* at "Microsoft Access"
*Laughing out loud
Admin
They have a mission-critical app that teeters on the edge of failure, and they don't tell the new guy that the first 10 things he wants to do are off limits because they will crash the system.
Management deserves what they get.
Admin
MS Access isn't supposed to be used in these kinds of heavy production environments, period. Even by MS's own strongly worded recommendations.
It's locking structure is not at all suited for multi-user and it likes to acquire table locks for the simplest of things. And why not? As far as Access is concerned, there should maybe be 1 or 2 people in the db at one time...
First thing I'm doing if I get there is upsizing to SQL Server and let access run as the front end only (One of it's redeeming features is access functions well as a front end for SQL Server, can preserve the existing access app but have a more robust database behind it).
Admin
Anyway, at $285k losses ... I think it would've been cheaper to just get Oracle 11g and just do a drop-replacement instead!
Admin
Why Oracle? Why not SQL Server? You're already in a Microsoft environment.
Admin
I have spent most of my career working on this type of crap for the auto industry. $5000 a minute is cheap, it can run allot higher. Even with the high cost of failure though, scary stuff like this happen over and over. These guys are willing to take the risk in order to save a buck.
They do not usually make you pay this up front, they usually deduct it from what they owe you over time. Also, you can usually negotiate it down.
Admin
When any company tells me they are using Access I tell them that my 8 yr old niece uses that as well for organizing her tape collection and perhaps they should talk to her if they want someone who ENJOYS using Access.
Admin
I heard that they tried adding another customer, but it deadlocked the database.
Admin
Admin
Create a new mdb with a linked table to the production mdb? Import the report into your new mdb, make the changes, you're good to go.
Admin
Admin
I keep thinking that if it wasn't software but forklifts or trucks in similar condition, nobody'd take the risk.
We should've called it "f*cks-you-really-hard-if-youre-not-careful-ware" and everybody would take software issues seriously.
Admin
I've got one with around 20 users working well; it's not terribly heavy though.
For a "major auto manufacturer" to hang its business in Access, though... wow. My jaw hit the floor on that one. Harder than any other story here. So hard, in fact, that I'm having trouble believing it.
Admin
About 5 years ago I placed an order for a Ford through my local dealership. It took about 4 months to deliver it from the factory, during which time it was completely untrackable and the dealership had no idea where it was or when it would show up. I always wondered how the fuck such a large company could be such as mess. Now I know.
Admin
Getting away from the Microsoft environment might be the point.
However, I'd go with MySQL. If it's good enough for Google and Wikipedia, it's good enough for whatever you're working on.
Admin
Admin
Haw! It HAD to be one of the US big-three. No other automaker is that stupid!
Admin
Admin
Google has their own proprietary database systems for anything involving heavy lifting / mission critical apps; MySQL tends to be for minor stuff.
Some parts of Google (acquired parts) actually do use MS SQL Server, but they try not to do that for too long.
Admin
6 figure salaries?
Admin
Ah, but you forget that this system is outsourced from the automaker. So it could be any sell-my-own-management-system automaker, if the outsourcer looks enterprisey enough!
Admin
Admin
This can't be real. He never mentions near-daily recovery of the database when Access inevitably corrupts the MDB.
Admin
How 'bout it
Admin
This solution always sounds good, until you realize that there will now be lots of brand-new and unhandled exceptions in your production system.
Admin
In the 90's, I worked on the system for a (now long gone) airline. At one point my PHB told me that they lost $500,000 per minute of downtime. and this was a medium sized north american carrier. American Airlines would be 2-5 times larger, if not more. Most of that was opportunity cost, but it's still a nice big number.
Admin
Dude, haven't you noticed how many WTFs are the direct result of choosing MS Access to be the backend of a high-volume multi-user production-critical application like this?
Frankly, MS should limit Access to 50 tables per DB, 100k records per table, and 20 concurrent users. That would make it great platform for your tape collection DB, but impossible to use for Ford's production control system. As it should be.
Captcha: luptatum. WTF?
Admin
Believe it. I work for a major semicon, and our worldwide production control system still runs on a VAX. I poop you not.
Admin
PostgreSQL might be also good. Anyway there are a lot of db which are eighter free/open or much less expensive then the crash...
Admin
Is everything you read on the internet true?
What if: Access was grandfathered in from some rinky dink outfit and Access were only a front end to MSSQL and one application of many in the system and Eric is not a developer but just a poor smuck clerk and Eric hacked Access to get to the data in the first place & Access had nothing to do with the previous big $$$ loss...
Still no excuse for a p*ss poor system but change 'barely' accessible to 'easily' accessible and 'developer' to 'hacker' to inject some reality.
Admin
I dislike MS products just as much as the next guy, but it seems Google's taken "embrace and extend" and turned it into "assimilate and rewrite," which is a WTF unto itself.
Admin
What are tapes? ;) (The real WTF?)
Admin
Most of the time this is the result of the application being used well beyond it's expected life or a prototype being pressed into production. The company often starts off with minimal needs where an Access app is perfectly appropriate. The company grows or is acquired, the application grows, but no one bothers to upsize it to a more enterprisey platform. The WTF is not Access in almost all cases I've seen here - it's unrealistic expectations and poor planning. I guess it's easier to knee jerk a "lol Access" response, though.
Admin
Arguments aside over Mysql's suitability for such an enterprise app, I think we'd all agree that it is still a step up from Access!
Admin
The right way to go about this would be to use shadow volume to make a backup copy..
Admin
Now the eyes of Grammar World are upon the Grammar Western Allies to open a second front in the West!
Admin
Does anyone else think of MCL Cafeteria when reading this story?
Admin
Do you really want to see the ugly ugly workarounds that would exist to get around those limits if that was the case? It might be even worse than example in the article...
Captcha: consequat
Admin
6 years ago I came across such an MS Access system in a bank. It held all complaints made against them and did the workflow on resolution of the compliants. With the number of mortgage complaints at an all time high (in the UK) there were about 100 users, doing nothing but using that system and dealing with the complaints, well trying to anyway.
Not only that but the developer was changing the same mdb file as the users were using it! Not QA, now testing, just save it and see what it did! They had corrupted DBs frequently, obviously serious quality problems and it was a complete mess. What did this bank do about it? Nothing not a thing it just kept creeking along.
The morale of this story is that you CAN run a mission critical system on MS Access and while as "real" developers we scoff at everything at this approach MS Access is actually working! That is more than I can say for some Java/C#/whatever apps I have seen.
Admin
Yeah, I'm getting tired of the fanboys trumpeting that "Google uses MySQL. And Google is HUGE>!>!! OMG111". IIRC, there was an article in Ars Technica a while back looking into Google's usage of MySQL. Turns out they use it for internal stuff like organizing company picnics, etc.
BTW, I'm no hater. I use MySQL anytime it's appropriate.
Admin
Access is a great tool (consider it a small hammer). It's great at hammering nails to hang pictures from, but you wouldn't want to use it to try and bust up concrete.
I developed an Access app that managed mission critical tapes for a branch of the US Military. Granted, all it did was track the tapes (when they were being recorded, what satellite was operational, how long do they need to be kept, which tapes could be reformated, etc.), but it did those tasks very well.
It had 1 data entry user, and 5-10 read-only users. Maybe 2 concurrent user, 3 tops.
SQL Server would have been overkill. Access was cheap, fast, created nice reports, and fit the bill. Downtime for the app had very minimal costs.
I love using Access for what it was designed for, a desktop database. But, for that many records? The lack of transaction logging itself would be scary.
Admin
Can someone say "ODBC Error"? Access front end runs this:
DoCMD.RunSQL "Update table set field = value"
And it runs it on a linked SQL Server table the user doesn't have UPDATE privileges on. Good luck trapping that.
OTOH, I agree. Generally, Access does make an easy to develop front-end to SQL Server. You just have to know its limits.
Admin
Access is a great tool (consider it a small hammer). It's great at hammering nails to hang pictures from, but you wouldn't want to use it to try and bust up concrete.
I developed an Access app that managed mission critical tapes for a branch of the US Military. Granted, all it did was track the tapes (when they were being recorded, what satellite was operational, how long do they need to be kept, which tapes could be reformated, etc.), but it did those tasks very well.
It had 1 data entry user, and 5-10 read-only users. Maybe 2 concurrent user, 3 tops.
SQL Server would have been overkill. Access was cheap, fast, created nice reports, and fit the bill. Downtime for the app had very minimal costs.
I love using Access for what it was designed for, a desktop database. But, for that many records? The lack of transaction logging itself would be scary.