The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

The Data Migration

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2014-08-26

Consider a small European country with more than 20 social insurance institutions, each using their own proprietary software. Now consider sharing data between them. After decades of integration failures, these institutions decided to standardize on a handful of applications. One of these institutions hired Philipp’s firm to migrate their data to DB2.

Philipp’s boss gave him the assignment with a clear conscience. “They have a data transfer interface already established. This should be a quick process.”

However, Philipp’s dreams of webservices, integration end-points, clean XML, and a well organized workflow were shattered when he was handed a few examples of the COBOL-generated flat files the company currently used for data transfer, via FTP. There was no documentation regarding the schema. Philipp sat down with William, an employee at the client site who had worked with this data for the better part of a generation, and had discovered its quirks through trial and error.

Don't Speak

by Ellis Morning in Feature Articles on 2014-08-05

“Are you Greg?” asked the burly man with a scar from eyebrow to chin. “I’m Mark, your manager.”

Greg’s wait in the lobby ended with a jolt of fear- and possibly a broken bone or two from Mark’s handshake. An awkward elevator ride and brief tour ended at Greg’s cubicle. It was a quad- four workspaces sharing a common center. Two corners were occupied, and Mark positioned Greg at the third.

“You’ll be supporting an internal application called PPP- taking over for Lenny, here.” Mark pointed toward one of the other cube-dwellers. “It already works, you just need to keep it that way. Learn the ropes here, and we’ll get you something newer and more interesting real soon. Lenny! Give Greg the PPP source code and backlog.”