Fellow programmers will feel my pain

[pbray]

We're in the midst of a crash development project, that's being sandwiched in around November close, prep for year-end and everyone's understandable desire to take vacation days before they lose them.

The goal is to build a new subset of the corporate spend database. Last week they created a test database for this project and I've been asked to pull sample data to load into it so we can start the analysis.

- The corporate spend database model has 12 dimensions.
- The test model that they built for me has 18 dimensions. The person who built it is on vacation this week and no one can explain why we have the 6 extra dimensions, or whether or not it is safe to delete them and go back to the regular 12 dimensions.
- The SQL queries that load the corporate spend model create an output file with 42 fields (dimensions). Several of these dimensions are obvious duplicates (three different formats for department numbers, for instance) but no one can explain to me which of the 42 fields are used to load the 12 dimensions in the corporate model and which ones are ignored. The expert on this is too busy to talk to me, and the backups are... you guessed it, on vacation.

And now the project lead is IM'ing me to ask why we haven't been able to load sample data yet.

Comments

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

Time for the project lead to earn their keep by yanking in people to enable you to get the job done.

(Yeah, right. I'll wait while you stop laughing.)

[tryslora]

Ow. What's sad is how typical that all sounds? For another giggle, I assume there's no documentation to map the data?

I hope you can get it smoothed out with a minimum of bloodshed and tearing out of hair!

[allaboutm-e.livejournal.com]

Your post was pretty much Greek to me, but sending sympathy anyway.

[controuble.livejournal.com]

ZOMG - I feel your pain - I did data design and coding until I was caught in the RIF. Don't suppose they'd be willing to pay me to come do it for them...

[vespican.livejournal.com]

Sounds a lot like the "brother-in-law" effect...
When I was in Naval Aviation Electronics school years (decades?) ago, we were going over a circuit schematic and noticed that it used way more diodes than was really needed to do the job. The instructor said it was a result of the "brother-in-law effect." Yeah, the circuit designer's brother-in-law manufactured diodes.
Dave

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

O.M.G. ::gently removes steak knives from pbray's vicinity::

Yeah, this kind of thing (on a smaller scale) happens all the time where I work. Of course, mostly that's because we have N the Network Guy and his sidekick S instead of, like, a proper IT department, but there's also the issue of "Oh, you mean when you said 'database' you meant an Access database? Doesn't an Excel worksheet work the same way?" ::facepalm::

[libwitch.livejournal.com]

obviously, the dimensions came in from the special space time matrix that is where all those vacation days were hiding