>> Seriously. Until I read this, I thought this kind of incompetent crap
>> was only on thedailywtf.com and asktom.oracle.com. Now it seems it
>> happens in The Real World too. This is... deeply worrying.
> 
> Of course. Where do you think those sites get their stories from? There are
> idiots everywhere.

I thought (hoped?) that only stupid companies employ people who can't do 
their job properly. Apparently I was wrong...

> What really worries me is that, other than the contractor who I've never
> met, I know these guys and they're neither stupid or careless. So how did
> this happen? Oversight? Managerial over rule? Critical mass?

Time pressure? Insufficient QC? Who knows...

Of course, The Real WTF is that they're asking you to check stuff over a 
few days before it goes live. ;-)

>> (Hey, did you hear about the guy who hired a bunch of programmers to add
>> multi-value columns to M$ Access? Because it's "impossible" to work with
>> a product so primitive that it doesn't have this "important feature"?)
> 
> Um, first rule of normalisation.

"Wot's normalizashun?"

> Wasn't that on daily WTF?

Yes, that's where I read it. Gave me a good giggle...



An extract from one of my Database Design lectures at Uni:

We are all gathered in room EWS14. There's approximately 40 of us. Ian 
Eyeball is at the front, lecturing us about normalisation and the 
potential problems that disregarding it can have.

Ian: "So, we have 1st normal form - which you never ever want to break. 
Then there's 2nd normal form and also 3rd normal form, then we come to 
Boyce-Codd normal form. There are higher normal forms, but you don't 
need to care about those. For the most part, you just need to make sure 
your tables are in Boyce-Codd normal form, which says - *Andrew*"

[I stand up]

Me: "Every determinent is a candidate key."

[I sit down again]

Ian: "Thank you Andrew."

[General amusement]

[Ian continues with the lecture.]

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