• (nodebb)

    Maybe someone is just copying and pasting from an old design spec and hoping no one notices or cares?

    That's mostly my thought on this, although it does, without actual justification, assume that the copy-paster cares...

    And, of course, there is one case where the statement (especially the "not applicable" part) might actually be unconditionally justified: a one-table application with no in-database links to anything else, but that seems pretty unlikely.

  • 516052 (unregistered)

    More likely it's the consequence of the system being preloaded with a bunch of old data scrounged up from excel files, physical archives and god knows what else all of which had different incompatible schemas which now lead to a system where literally everything is optional. That or someone didn't know how to handle delete properly.

  • LegacyWarrior (unregistered) in reply to 516052

    I think that's how my company's product also evolved. The justification that I usually hear is that "It's easier for the customer!" to be able to upload either their Widgets, or Widget Ingredients, or Customers, or Customer Orders in any order that they feel like... or omit any of them entirely!

  • (nodebb) in reply to LegacyWarrior

    "It's easier for the customer!"

    Cue the old story of how Microsoft insisted on shipping Windows 95 with all ports open --- despite the wailings of the engineers --- because they didn't want to deal with support calls from users who could not figure out how to configure their network, or even simply connect a printer.

  • SomeRandomName (unregistered)

    Kind of like at an old job of mine, where they Did Not Believe in referential integrity constraints, because they Slowed Things Down. (They used triggers instead. Imagine.) If I included them in my own work, it was strongly suggested I remove them. If mine slipped through (because there were no required code reviews at that time), sometimes the next person(s) working on that particular project would remove them. Eventually we got a real DBA who wasn't interested in bullshit, just about the time the error rate had increased to a point that could no longer be ignored. We started adding referential constraints in new work and over time to old work, which was particularly fun when they got around to the two main customer tables numbering in the millions of records.

  • Klimax (unregistered) in reply to dpm

    OK, that's a new myth I haven't heard. yet. (Sorry, but that old "story" is total BS.)

  • Fizzlecist (unregistered) in reply to Klimax

    That's a new one to me too. IIRC Windows 95 didn't install TCP/IP by default either.

  • (nodebb)

    That also would not have been a wacky decision by 1995 tech standards. BY 2000, yes. But the entire industry learned about malicious actors right about then.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Fizzlecist

    Also, this was in the age of dial-up Internet before broadband was commonly available, as well as Windows 95 lacking a built in firewall.

  • (nodebb)

    I don't think a firewall made it into the Win9x series of Windows until ME. Windows NT did have a firewall though, but Windows XP made it more useful, and XP SP2 actually not just enabled it by default, but turned it on before it brought the network interface up. (Essential as XP and XP SP1 brought it up after the interface was up, so there was a narrow window where you could get infected.

    Not that the TCP/IP stack on Windows 9x was really any good - even with a firewall it was still possible to attack it.

Leave a comment on “A Solid Reference”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #697912:

Log Out

« Return to Article