• AC (unregistered) in reply to cod3_complete
    cod3_complete:
    This is nothing! I've tamed tables with 144 columns and sprocs that took a corresponding 144 arguments. You guys are complete wimps! True WTF code I see it everyday. :-(

    Gosh darn. I wanted to brag about the 47-column table and the DB System where the designer stored his private journal in a table called "only_for_<name>", but you topped it.

  • TheMuuj (unregistered) in reply to cod3_complete
    cod3_complete:
    This is nothing! I've tamed tables with 144 columns and sprocs that took a corresponding 144 arguments. You guys are complete wimps! True WTF code I see it everyday. :-(

    144 arguments?! That's just gross.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to LEGO
    Enterprisey Architect:
    I think that using a BLOB to store the XML is still far superior to the single text field.

    Wait, you're jumping to the XML too soon. The database should map field names to token. The tokens are then looked up against a properties file to get the name of a class. Then you dynamically instantiate that class using RMI, create an XML message that describes a query, and call the xmlQuery() function of the class, passing it the XML string you created. The return value is another XML string that includes the desired values amongst its tags. At least, that's how a system I'm working on today does it. This is not a joke. Well, it is a joke, but the joke is that somebody thought this was a good design.

  • MM (unregistered) in reply to pitchingchris
    pitchingchris:
    Man, reminds me of a post last week on databases that were not normalized. This is even worse. In both cases, using a database system did hardly anything for them.
    It's the sort of thing that could almost give you some sympathy for the clueless guy believing that databases are inherently unstable (from another recent WTF article, but I'm too lazy to look up or remember which). I wonder if this is the sort of ungainly monstrosity that he'd encountered to lead him to that conclusion.
  • VladyLama (unregistered) in reply to KenW

    The UserDefined mess I have seen before. Lots of systems have a few of each data type designed this way for users to use as custom fields.

  • njb42 (unregistered)

    I'm working on a system like this right now, for real. Some of the tables have up to 180 columns. Many of them have column names like CUSTOM1 through CUSTOM30, where the meaning of each CUSTOM column depends on the value of a TYPE column.

    The guy who designed this mess? He's been promoted from Architect to CTO.

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