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Admin
Yes, there are companies this retarded, but by no means all of them. Here's a possible strategy if you see this sort of thing coming:
Ask the boss to buy a couple of reasonably new items before the auction. Just a couple. The office manager can do what the hell he wants for the rest.
Six months later, the new items are still chugging along, while the office manager's auction crap is dying all the time. Now take the users who got stuck working with the crap, and make sure they know that you want to help them. They probably don't care whether the crap is fixed or replaced - they just want it to work. And look, their co-worker two cubicles over has something that does work. Let them convince the boss to let them in on the gravy train, too.
And if the boss still doesn't budge? Well, you're still the employees' friend. Make sure they understand that the crap can't be replaced unless it's broken, mmmkay?
Admin
Shame on you, Mr Saw!
Admin
I stand corrected.
Admin
Whoa- that is way too familiar sounding. Right down to the meetings, the IM, the db, the client app...
Wonder if I worked with this guy. If so, the db problems were definitely not his fault. In fact, he helped a lot.
Admin
Uh, the client is a database schema design tool?
Admin
Starr?
Admin
it was CRM data with multiple client sets that required different fields according to each departments needs?
No idea why'd they'd be going off all the time though...
Admin
See, while you are perfectly right, it took me a long time to figure out that I have to do my investigation before jumping in. One of the reasons being that after Russia all these things did not matter much; now they do.
So, my suggestion - pay more attention to why the person does not ask anything. :)
Admin
Admin
There is no valid reason to do that. Besides, you're granting the clients authority to do all manner of bad things to your database.
Admin
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. It's so stupid it actually hurts to think about.
Admin
There's a reason why IT managers are managers - if you put someone with as much power as a IT manager has under everyone else in the hierarchy, nothing good can come out of it. (S)He has to be high enough in the hierarchy to be able to make decisions instead of just following orders.
The Right Thing for the person in this example to do would have been to stand for him/herself, demand the correct position or quit.
On the other hand, considering everything, (s)he probably should have quit the second day in any case, and clearly state the reasons in the exit interview (should there be one).
Admin
Colo factory?
Admin
I have seen it done (usual disclaimer: I didn't design this - I just had to live with it!)
Given a parent/child relationship enforced by referential integrety constraints in the database. Now, mess up the relationsship so it becomes recursive (parent points to child which points back to parent) (don't ask, just don't ask. PLEASE don't ask. I beg you - don't ask)
Now you have created a design that won't allow inserts of data. In order to insert a parent she MUST have a child already inserted, but in order to insert the child, the mother MUST already have been inserted.
So, the application issues a "alter table disable constraint xxx", does the inserts, re-enables the constraint and commits.
Simple, elegant, neat.... Ahhh, no, not really.
Bo
Admin
I'm in this bas situation right now, and have also been forced to use Serena Dimensions in my previous job. I've always wondered how they can sell this crappy shit. A single look at a screenshot is sufficient to understand how crappy the program is. It's so unusable that we have in fact decided in our team to use Subversion and synchronize the "officiel" Dimensions repository from time to time.
Admin
OK, I love wtf but this hits too close to home. It's strikingly similar to my employer so I'm writing up some counter points. I consider it unlikely that we're connected but I want to play devil's advocate. "Sergey", its likely you aren't the person I'm referring to so please don't take this personally.
Para 1) Hiring manager mentioning sysadmin and database work this is possible due to management's lack of IT understanding. Give a point for Sergey for initiative and take two away for not re-reading the job description for the title on monster. The job was for a high level technical operations manager. Wtf does that have to do with database work? Sergey felt it was responsibility to hit the trenches and do the job of the dba's and developers with an idiots guides to sql under his belt and a severe case of IT arrogance. Yes, we were taking over a system built by consultants and boy did they do a number on us but we did not want someone with no proper training performing DBA work on the single most important server in the company.
Para 2) I'm sure he felt this way but it was not the case. This was person was at a high level and many people had expectations. When is this not the case?
Para 3) Meetings? It's easy to mock them but sometimes you have to actually communicate to your team instead of sitting in a closet. Sergey liked his office with the door closed and lights off.
Para 4) IM, it was never mandated but we use it. Perhaps there's something to this IM thing considering that MILLIONS of people use it on a daily basis? And yes when something bad happens people are going to want to communicate that to you. Um duh?
Para 5) Colo facility, yeah I didn't care for that decision. I would have hated the decision if I was the person "administrating" those servers but this person somehow liked the idea. I prefer to keep the servers close - they have feelings too!
Para 6) Raid array, kinda like those computational computers? Intelligence level hint...
Para 7) High load, yeah thats us. Like I said, the consultants did a number on us and we still have a lot to fix. Somehow this person felt it his responsibility to play whackamole with spids. What a hero. On two occasions our purchased software did go corrupt, the configuration was on the database but the database was not to blame. Yes, I'm living a real-life WTF but sometimes the WTFs even have wtfs.
Para 8) Db is backed up nightly, its a 115GB database and isn't a screamer. Backup jobs would fail and I understand how someone with limited db knowledge would overhear competent database developers discussing the purchased software sending queries that dynamically compiled code MAY mistake this as an ALTER TABLE statement. It just wasn't happening and even if it was - the db software would process those backups just fine. There's a problem with ALTER DATABASE statement though... Hmmm, better check that book again?
Para 9) We are throwing hardware at the db. It went from 2 cores to 4 and now 8 and we're eying 16. Perhaps these are small potatoes to some of the big companies. The company is small and growing. We struggle to fix the bad and build the new but we're starting to make progress. The applications and databases are our scope, the computers, and network was his.
BTW - the last straw was when servers began dieing one by one across a number of weeks. Sergey was fired because someone brought up the point that he was supposed to be administrating the system.
Admin
Admin
Don't know for other databases, but Oracle at least has constraints that are only checked at commit time.
Admin
Yes. When mentioning RAID, there's no need to mention trouble.
Admin
So if stupid people in this thread are hurting my brain, should I use the Report Abuse Link?
Very appropriate CAPTCHA : Darwin
Admin
Well.. we once built a quite complex application that stored generic data. Like "Objects" with any kind of Properties. This forced us in the end to create and alter Tables representing the properties. This was simply needed because after a couple of millions of records the old approach with t_obj -> t_property turned out to be quite slow.
Admin
I actually asked for my scapegoating skills to be taken into account in one review.
Admin
Garbage FPP
Are these made up now?
If it were me, and I was remotely interested in a sysadmin role, I'd be interviewing them.
If it were me, I'd quit.
Admin
Admin
This sounds eerily familiar- the db, the client app, the backups, the meetings, the IM's, the casual wasting of time by others. The RAID controllers, the all-encompassing DB.
I seriously wonder if I worked at the same place as this guy. Named Sergey. Who was a DBA. I don't know if he's still there- I left awhile back.
Weird.
Admin
Or another interpretation: "a bunch of consultants who we fired because they messed it up, were the last people to touch this."
Admin
How do ALTER TABLE and adding an Enum field tie together? I can see having to INSERT to add an Enum value, but can't come up with a tie in with ALTER TABLE. Can you explain?
Admin
Have you priced them lately? We just bought a 2TB Buffalo device (4 500GB drives) for under $900 from Dell, including shipping. Sounds pretty inexpensive to me - I'm even thinking about one for myself at home for HDTV recording.
Admin
Neither of those choices are acceptable.
The reason that apps like you describe exist is one of two:
or
I've experienced both, and have been put in the position of pointing out how stupid this is, and how nasty the problems will be when later they discover that the attempt will cost big $$$ to fix.
Admin
Sounds more like Sergey didn't have the balls to fix the situation.
Admin
I have to say a couple of things here, if you really believe what you posted. First, I'm glad I don't work with you, and second, I have to presume that you work for a company owned by a relative of yours.
Any attempt to allow customers to alter database schemas on their own, without someone involved who knows what they're doing, is doomed before it starts. Anyone who doesn't have the experience to know that should only be allowed to work under the close supervision of someone who does.
Admin
Admin
This is almost correct. :) But it definitely was "ALTER TABLE".
Admin
Man, that sucks... Hope he found better work elsewhere
Admin
Man, that sucks... Hope he found better work elsewhere
Admin
Sorry. It's Friday, my giveashitter's broken, and I'm in an odd mood.
Admin
If life in IT is this horrific, perhaps you should be in a different business.
If there's anything worse than clueless bosses and impossible working conditions, it's the pathetic wretches on this site who spend all their time talking about how IT is absolutely horrible, bosses are absolutely horrible, nobody does anything right, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
If it really is that bad, and you don't have the slight shred of guts necessary to get out of the business or start your own, you pretty much deserve what you get.
Either learn to be happy with it, learn to change it, or find another line of work. But don't bitch at anyone who says that people should try to improve their situations - it just makes you look like a whiny, gutless brat.
Admin
Why is that a WTF? Sounds like a typical IT job in a non-IT company to me. At least they were doing backups.
Admin
I think I've never worked a job where the interview or the job description had any relation to the actual work.
My rule is, if you see "other duties as required", the rest of the tasks are filler. My current job description is literally "duties as required". The rest of it is just to keep HR happy.
Admin
I agree with BCH.
Communication is key. If there are this many problems, and his schedule is not allowing him to complete tasks due to interruptions.. where is the problem? How do you fix this problem?
Sergey should have assumed the role of manager by action: telling everyone else what the problems are, the order they will be resolved and lay the down the law with security to manipulate the database. If he needed help, perhaps bringing in some hired guns to get the environment under control was required.
As the first admin for the company, how would the company's management know what is needed or required? Management brought in a subject matter expert as a full time employee for a reason.
Admin
I used something called Merant PVCS at a previous job... OMG it was bad. I think it was actually a Java application, not Javascript or even a Java applet. The GUI looked like something from Windows 3.0 beta and keystrokes took up to 15 minutes to have any effect. What a POS that was... it still amazes my colleagues when I tell them that, yes, there are much worse systems than SourceSafe.
Admin
he was hired so there would be somebody to blame.
consultants, of course, are the ones that tell you there is a problem growing, and it needs more study, for X thousand dollars.
so they can't possibly have anything to do with the patched-up whack jobs that are hitting the database, can they???
Admin
Marketing.
Admin
I'd probably say something that means 'I told you so' and then go on to explain that since they bought broken stuff and won't spring for better stuff, that the office equipment will be broken with some regularity and that I can't be expected to perform miracles. And then they'd call me Not A Team Player and boot me.
Of course, by then I'd have a new gig lined up with a place that actually is willing to pay for stuff that works.
Admin
Admin
One essential technique is to be sure to IM the person whose request is being interrupted. Let them know who has requested that it be superceded.
Pretty soon upper management will be called in to set your priorites.
That could be good or bad, but it's better than thrashing.
Admin
I did that once, but it was a prototype that was never going to see light of day. Same problems, of course.
I also killed one of those later in my career. At least that one had myriad small bags of properties and usually less than 20 per bag, so performance was ok. Maintainability was abysmal.
I remember that thing - USPS loves that thing. For what reason, I do not know.
Admin
Not adding a new Enum value to a specific row, but adding a new Enum value in general (one that previously wasn't a valid value for that column).
Admin
I actually work with one product that offers this as a (mostly) non-WTF add-on, but the fields are (1) stored in a separate table, and (2) designed for human reference only (programmers can incorporate them into business logic, but you do run into a bit of a WTF at that point). The first generation was limited to a few major tables; the second generation is close to 100% comprehensive, but only for a few modules so far.
A few different products (including this one) also include a poor man's version for free, i.e. a few major tables have a few arbitrary fields built in that can be labeled and used as the customer sees fit.
Admin
I would have handed in my notice on the first day, assuming I'd even accepted the job after hearing that description. Those people didn't want a sysadmin, they wanted someone to dump their crap on.
I wonder if Sergey was experienced enough or even suitable for that role. Being a top-level sysadmin is not something you can walk into fresh out of college. You genuinely do need to work your way up the hard way. If you don't have experience of successfully pulling the systems out of at least two major meltdowns, you won't have a clue what to do when the next one happens and responsibility to fix it is entirely on your shoulders.