NYCPHP Meetup

[Jeff]

This will *definitely* be a long time client. They are well aware of the
problems with the data and prior to beginning the project we had lengthy
discussions with the company that creates the data. This data is used by
parts dealers across the continent so they were not keen on the idea of
doing it the "right way" nor was the client keen on shelling out the
money to "normalize" the data. There are many more data issues...I only
touched the tip of the iceberg.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Hendricks [mailto:jim at bizcomputinginc.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 7:46 PM
To: NYPHP Talk
Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] MySQL and spaces in data


Sounds to me you have the perfect situation to make lots of money!

While it may be a real PITN to work with data that horribly structured,
it
does mean that everything you do will take 3-4 times as long to write
and
will be very prone to bugs.  Any time I have a client force me into a
poor
design decision, I document the hell out of it so that every time the
client
complains how long it takes me to do XY & Z, or how many anomolies are
in
the program, I gently remind them that if they had agreed to proper
design
from the start they would get faster development times, better
performing
applications, and relatively bug free code.  When a client hears that
message enough times in answer to their complaints, they either stop
complaining, stop development, or take it in the wallet and go for a
redesign so that the wallet doesn't hurt so much in the future.

It's sort of like I used to love working with Oracle databases because
they
were so complicated and poorly documented.  It's not that I loved the
work
so much as I loved getting the money caused by Oracles complexity!

Jim
______________________________________________________________
Jim Hendricks, President, Biz Computing, Inc
Phone:  (201) 599-9380     Email: jim at bizcomputinginc.com
Web: www.bizcomputinginc.com
Snail:  Jim Hendricks,  Biz Computing, Inc.,  255 McKinley Ave, New
Milford,
NJ 07646
______________________________________________________________

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff" <jsiegel1 at optonline.net>
To: "NYPHP Talk" <talk at nyphp.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 8:34 PM
Subject: RE: [nycphp-talk] MySQL and spaces in data


> I had originally intended to do that, that is, normalize the data. The
> idea was "killed" a long time ago by the client.
>
> Let me make matters worse, so to speak. This data has a part code that
> represents each different car part, e.g., brakes; fender, etc.
However,
> the company that creates the data (*not* my client) decided to use the
> same exact part code number for different parts so that every
electronic
> module in a car has the part code "591" even though one module may
> control air bags and one may control ignition, etc. Further, part
> dealers know the parts by these 3 digit codes and can differentiate
them
> by their description (ignition; air bag, etc.). So it requires a part
> code and text description to differentiate an air bag control module
for
> a Buick from one from a Chevy, etc.  Even the make/model information
> that is provided is not complete....for example, some parts are lumped
> in under Mercedes Benz even though there are many different models of
> Mercedes.
>
> The bottom line is that the data is not pretty.
>
> Jeff
>



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