House of Eratosthenes

I knew it could not be long in coming. The way it was described in that press conference, did not make a whole lot of sense to me. I have the impression this system is sort of a jerry-rig approach, full of cotter pins, duct tape and band aids, and that such an oopsie was inevitable.

In fact, in all my years with supporting computer applications, this is the primary source of oopsies. It isn’t that such systems take their first breaths of life on somebody’s desktop machine with Microsoft Office products that are designed for — let’s face it — some guy to keep track of his seashell collection or what-not. That is, after all, the most effective way of figuring out what you want the application to actually do. It’s that they stay there. The plant becomes too big for the pot.

At some point, there is a “database migration project” to a client-server platform, or three-tier platform, which costs engineering resources and project management resources and design resources and software licensing dollars and down-time. More often than not, it doesn’t happen. That seems to be what happened here, and it’s got me wondering where else it isn’t happening and what other mistakes are being made.

What’s the result? Situation: Very much like parking a fine vintage Packard in a garage made out of Lincoln Logs. Inappropriate for the magnitude of data, inappropriate for the importance of the mission and worst of all, loaded up with the potential for human error. Outcome: Exquisite embarrassment. Yet another vote-counting scandal. An obvious lack of confidence.

And a bunch of crazed left-wingers forced to choke on their words. Well, that part I like. And a whole lot.

But it still isn’t a good thing.

And a bunch of crazed left-wingers forced to choke on their words. Well, that part I like. And a whole lot.

Agreed all around.

Why are votes being counted on personal desktop machines? I thought they had those fancy, schmancy ballot readers and the über-cool electronic voting machines that tallied shit up on a disk and …

Man, the potential for voter fraud in this country … it’s not good.

“Oops! Found some votes we missed over here. Four days later. What? So it’s more total votes than we had voters registered? Well, at least everyone who wanted to got a chance to vote.

At least this one went our way. Hope to God it was an honest mistake.

I guess they keep the paper ballots around to re-count as a double-check.
- philmon | 04/08/2011 @ 20:23
Well, Dan over at Pruning Shears sent me a very courteous off-line advising me of updates. Almost makes me feel bad for my smarmy comment. But I would encourage a quick survey of the left-wing blogs about this. The “Control-S lady” in question has Republican credentials, so this is shaping up to be a scandal, or at least there is much attempt to make a scandal out of it.

But like I explained in response: I have much professional experience with finding Access databases doing the work that would rightfully be done by something more industrial-grade, professional and trackable. This is not the least bit out of order with what I’ve seen, although it is very much out of order with common sense.

The responsibility of using a database system to produce “correct” numbers, does not easily translate into the responsibility of making sure the database system is scaled properly and has the correct controls on it. People just don’t see it that way. Perhaps they shouldn’t.

But boy…it really makes you wonder what else is out there. My last job, I think our sniffer rooted around and eventually discovered seven thousand of the goddamn things. Only a few of them were found to have any importance, but still. Once you get Access on your desktop you can create anything you like with it. And if it works, God only knows what mission-critical stuff is going to end up running on it. It’s actually a pretty common problem.
- mkfreeberg | 04/08/2011 @ 20:42
Here’s another example. I’m a member of a license plate collectors’ organization. I had enough sysad experience early enough that when my collection got to the point where I couldn’t remember everything I had I set up a FileMaker database – well, actually a set of them to keep track of different parts of the collection.

A year or so ago the question came up in the organization’s listserv of what software people were using to track their collections. Of the people who replied, it turned out that I’m the only one even using database software, except for one or two using Access; everyone else is using Excel. None of them seem aware that a spreadsheet is the wrong tool for the job.
- vvp39 | 04/09/2011 @ 10:19
Just to pick a nit or two… not ALL Access apps are bad. I had a pretty sophisticated Access database application that was used for tracking problem/service management metrics for a LARGE manufacturing concern (read as: global… North and South America, Europe, and Asia). This wasn’t Access running on someone’s desktop… it was a full blown, dual-server (with back-up servers for redundancy), industrial strength application that handled hundreds of thousands of transactions on a daily basis. The hardware architecture, the system architecture, and its output (i.e., the monthly reporting deliverables) were audited by one of the (former) Big Six accounting/consulting firms (Price Waterhouse, if memory serves) on behalf of our client, an annual contractual requirement… and we came away with flying colors… not ONE discrepancy or finding. The system was reliable, accurate, and trouble free. Cheap, too. That was in the mid-90s.
- bpenni | 04/09/2011 @ 12:32
One bad AccessApp don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl, OH! 😉

Sorry. Couldn’t help it. Feelin’ the jive today.
- philmon | 04/09/2011 @ 13:13
I think Buck’s got it – Access was not the problem, a lack of standards enforcement was the problem.

Access, in my experience, is completely capable of maintaining database integrity. Indeed, unlike games like Filemaker, etc, it is built upon Codd’s 12 rules of database design – but only if the db manager is able to understand the need for standards.

The fact that the database application was allowed to accept Excel spreadsheets that exceeded the design specs of the database is purely the fault of the administrator, not the program itself. No excuses.
- rob | 04/09/2011 @ 18:33
I’m tempted to stick to form here and leave all my work stuff out of it like I usually do, but this has always fascinated me: How data repositories, and the procedures built around them, migrate from one platform to another. The longer I look into it, the more I deplore Access. It simply has no place. You need to properly design the database in order to use the application, and by the time you do that why are you using Access?

I like Excel, actually — but only as a launching pad, or maybe as a transfer medium. It goes without saying nothing has any business living there indefinitely. In my experience, when an application is “born” in a proper database-server environment, it’s usually a disaster because it’s put together by people who are concerned with the mechanisms, who are different from the people doing the “real” work.

I’m afraid on this one, no Buck doesn’t quite have it right. See, Boyce-Codd normal form is not the issue. The issue is the “level” at which the application interacts with the database. The right way to go is with proper database-level transactions, to a server class machine with advanced server features including RAID, integrity checking…all that good stuff. In a multi-user environment Access works with file-level transactions (seek, read, write, lock). Sure it can work fine. But you know how Word and Excel get confused when they run on network drives; Access has been known to have that problem too. Yes they’ve ironed the bugs out of it somewhat, but by the time the improvements were made, the proper-database-server side of it became much more mature and robust. And then there is the matter of security. You want to bring in network-level (Layer 3, and layer 2) protections with proper network access control, application access control and database access control, to protect your data.
- mkfreeberg | 04/09/2011 @ 19:35

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Your Microsoft Access Vote-Counting Post MortemFriday, April 8th, 2011

Your Microsoft Access Vote-Counting Post Mortem
Friday, April 8th, 2011