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Admin
Relational databases are for suckers.
Admin
Heh, for some reason there are just some people out there that will never quite grasp the concept of relational databases. I figure I could train a monkey on it given enough time (oooo ooo....one Tree, many Bannana...), but not some people...
Admin
I'm not sure which is worse: the database design or the rigidity of the CMS. That dictates a lot of structure, which is almost certainly not going to match what the client wants to display.
Admin
<FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #efefef">It goes from bad to worse. An appalling database design, then implemented in Access, and finally - some poor guy has to maintain this instead of just binning it and starting again. That's as big a WTF as the table design IMHO.</FONT>
Admin
Umm guys, the WTF here is not the messed up use of the database (that's more of a bonus WTF). The real WTF is that the programmer was supposed to come up with a solution that made it easy for his customer to modify the contents of pages. Instead he's got this monstrosity. The fact you use Access to edit it tells me that this is not the backend to some super-swank, easy to use GUI.
Admin
Can somebody explain how this is better than plain HTML pages? I must be real stupid to fail to grasp the essence of this wonderful design.
Admin
Actually Access is quite fine, the table design is a nightmare. I've seen quite a few sites done well w/ Access that have some fairly heavy traffic -- if you're caching right, it performs just fine and it's not much of a hinderence.
Admin
Not bad, but it could be improved upon. One thing I learned in database class was to normalize you design. If you normalized it, it would not be limited to the 10x10 table either, since the rows and columns would be stored in their own tables.
Everything is moving to a more dynamic approach to development, and if you want to be a successful developer, you need to get on board.
Admin
Certainly there's some UI somewhere... Either that or the user's requirements were: "I want to create a website with dynamic content. It should be stored in a database, every page of dynamic content will have several sections and a 10x10 table, which you can define in multiple colors.. Yeah, colors.. that would be nice. We need lots of colors... Oooh, shiny things... ... UI? No. I pay you by the line. Just make it so you can type it into the table..."
Admin
Where are the actual contents of the 100 cells stored?
Admin
I, too, am extremely curious to see what 1 row of data in this table looks like ....
I wonder if they have ever heard of style sheets? Probably not ...
Admin
I can't believe he didn't just use Javascript! [8-)]
Admin
Also, has anyone else noticed that, except for row #6, this only allows for the first 6 columns in the other rows to have a background color. Row 6, on the other hand, defines colors for all 11 columns.
I wonder if this table was designed by the guy who created yesterday's.... Clearly here having the table's fields in alphabetic order would be helpful --- almost a necessity.
Admin
Hey all. I'm the Maintainer of the database.
Nope, no UI at all. The client has to update the db and upload it to the web server for every change...
Admin
OMG! [:O]
Please, please tell me that this isn't true!
JD
Admin
I've taken screen shots of the db in action:
html content (it's in hebrew, every change requires copying the text to a web html editor in order to see it properly - Image 1
cells background color - Image 2
Stylesheets? you mean 13kb broken into two files, with overlapping, overridding, unused, global html tag modifiers (TD, DIV, A, etc) classes? where i have to make local style changes to override those classes?Admin
Unfortunately, my current employer has plans for me to create a module that is essentially the same in design. They have the great idea of letting the clients have fine-grained control over the content and structure of the module's output.
Great in theory, but in reality will be a real nightmare for the clients to manage and implement. Since they have spend so much time tweaking it. My boss doesn't care. He just wants something we can charge $$ for dropping on a page. Let the clients worry about the rest.
Admin
<font face="Georgia">I would chime in with "they should have done it in LISP", in order to show solidarity with the anonymous poster who keeps saying the same thing about JavaScript, but I'd be too late: Paul Graham and friends did exactly that - a whole site builder written in LISP: Yahoo! Store. He has some great stories about it. The summary is that, if you know the language, LISP is the most powerful language ever invented, and it becomes not only possible but frighteningly easy to use it to do things that would blow your socks off. However, the "if you know the language" condition is the tricky one...
</font>
Admin
Admin
Admin
Actually, Bat, the first four versions of ATG Dynamo were written in Scheme, and there are quite a few other web builders both in Common Lisp and in Scheme. XML maps surprisingly well to s-exps, apparently.
Admin
<font face="Georgia">Indeed - consider this:
<font face="Georgia">is much easier to type as:</font>
</font> <font face="Georgia">But it just ain't trendy enough. Maybe if they renamed it XISP...
</font>
Admin
I truly hope that this is intended to be very dry humour.
Admin
Perhaps true, but to author xml, you don't type it. You use an xml editor that allows you to work on the document, without worrying about tags.
Admin
Admin
I've done this to a client before. Good reasons.
a) They already maintained a fairly well-structured access database.
b) They got about 10 hits a day.
I did make a util that reuploaded the db daily though :)
Admin
I use VIM and I'm proud of it. And I don't use the VS2003 designer either! Ha.
Drak
Admin
Maybe a stupid question, but what with Stylesheets, xml, xml schemes ect?
If I see it correctly the entire page (and site) is stored in a database, including ALL the html and then put together? Seems a bit ackward...
Admin
Yep, which is why i can't scrap it all and rebuild it... the whole "I invested lots of time/money in this, i'm not going to pay just to get the same thing again" thinking mode.
Admin
Aggggggh! I'm blind!
Admin
Admin
As a consolation, you may find the books "Changing Minds" by Howard Gardner and "The First 90 days" by Michael Watkins to be of tremendous help. The first book however, is lacking in practical framework and advice, and largely serves more of a theoretical primer on how people think and what "levers" you must identify to "tip" the scales in your favour.
Admin
Admin
It tastes like burning!
Sorry, had to be said.
Admin
Damn! Damn! Damn! James
Admin
It's even called tblContentPage ... argh!
Admin
Incredibly agile solution!
Admin
WHY do people insist on prefixing table names with tbl? Is this to let others know it's a table, as if that isn't obvious? I guess if these people worked in the automotive industry, would they prefix all car names with car? Like carMustang? :(
As for the single large table thinking, I've dealt with plenty who think this is the optimal way to do it, because it's the fastest way to get it done and relational databases are too complex for the task at hand... :P
If I had to maintain this, I'd quit. I'd rather flip burgers than work on such a monster.
Admin
I believe it is common practice to prefix table names with t_ or tbl_, so that they can be distinguished from views (starting with v_) or stored procedures, or other database objects.
It's particularly handy when debugging a query to see which row sources are tables and which are views...
Admin
WTF? can be distinguished from which other database objects?
i suppose it's also necessary to name columns with the c_ or col_ prefix?
what a crock
Admin
But you don't want to distinguish between tables and views. The whole point of views is that they look just like tables. Sheesh.
Admin
If I'm looking at a stored procedure, and want to go look up the tables or views they use, which in my db manager are in different areas of the UI, it is in fact quite handy to know just by looking at the object name to know which it is. No, we do not prefix column names with a "col" prefix (or a datatype prefix). Sheesh, yourselves...
Admin
aaaaaaah! crapily designed database... it burns!
well, to be honest, i can imagine a lot of code on thedailywtf could perhps be the result of the following:
this practice should stop! wait to hire them after they've learnt something in their final year, the only year there is anything worth learning... plus, this would free up a lot of jobs for us serious developers who know how to do things right and not design something which will cost more in the end to maintain, just because someone wanted cheap labour
2. managers who want certain projects done as quickly and cheaply as possible by trimming all corners... often a programmer is forced to resign themselves to writing quick and sloppy code at the request of his paycheck provider...
"you say you want a complex database, that should take atleast a week to design, done in a night?"
"yes, and make it shorter if you can... dont bother about the data validation"
[^o)]
That's not to say there aren't many sorry excuses for crap programmers out there, but I can think of a few instances in the past, at an old company, where I was told to perform such tasks and it was all against my instinct and painful to do, but thats life of a programmer; a mere pawn. im pretty sure their desicions are haunting them now tho, so I have my silent revenge.
Admin
I have to deal with (and code for) a situation like this every day at work because some folks around my office who for some unknown reason have more of a say in IT decisions than any of the people who actually do anything IT-related have decided that more than one table makes for databases that are unwieldy to manage.
Admin
This two things are too real... [:'(]
Admin
<FONT face=georgia><font face="georgia">
</FONT>Admin
<FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"><FONT color=#ff1493>omgwtfbbq </FONT><FONT color=#800080>lawlz [pi][B][^]</FONT></FONT>
Admin
<FONT color=#ff1493>omgwtfpaperclip [8-|][pi][sn][O][Y][:-*][B][B][B]</FONT>
Admin
[:'(]Puppy.