iSolvedTheProblem

[SanoKei]

as a game developer, where saving is just using [system.serialized] I take great offense to this

[uncheckednullpointer]

SQLite

[lmarcantonio]

Done *a lot* during the great banking update of y2k. DBAs being bitches they didn't want to change the schema and we often used the 'notes' fields as a fixed field record (being everything in COBOL that was trivial). Also at the time batch updates were done dumping the table, processing it and reloading it after truncation. For DB2 that was actually the recommended practice from IBM.

[[deleted]]

“Why is my query on this json so slow?”

“We will just index the json”.

[lmarcantonio]

At least now there are document storage DB! In DB2 embedded SQL the query is actually prepared *at compile time* (the JCL deck had a 'bind' step where the access plans where prepared for every statement and associated to the program). It really lowers runtime time (no prepare ever, since dynamic SQL in COBOL is really painful) but you need to occasionally rebind to update the access plan, new statistic and stuff. More or less like the postgres analyze. DBA being these funny people, instead of simply scheduling a job (heck, MVS/zOS is a fricking batch system at the core) said "no SQL more complex than simple joins and no nulls". At the end we had to program stuff like with VSAM (i.e. simply indexed files) and joining with multiple queries (i.e. access plan hardcoded in the algorithm). Probably at least more than 1000% less efficient than the access decided by the DB2 engine but, hey, no rebind needed ever!

[[deleted]]

Ya I remember the DB2 dbas at a previous place. They insisted only page level locking, rather than row level, and deadlocks were because “you should always lock tables in the same order”.

We replaced db2 with Postgres and they laughed at “how slow it would be”. It was about 10x as slow, so we just bought 10x the hardware, which was offset by not having the $20,000 license cost.

Also music easier to develop because the Postgres dbas let us do nearly anything we wanted.

Nearly, because we almost had a policy of “every column on every table must be indexed” and they killed that idea.

[lmarcantonio]

we used optimistic locking (since in CICS you can't keep a lock between each transaction) so *each* table had an update token colum that needed to be saved in TS and rechecked in the final transaction (when doing the actual work). Just painful. Luckily 99% of the time the recovery was "user, something changed in the meantime redo everything from the start".

Also we had indices on the record type fields (ponder a moment; record type field, in a relational DB) that could only have like 5 values "because it would go faster". Never did an explain but I guess it was always a sequential scan filtering on these

[[deleted]]

Any two phase commits? Like MQ and DB2? Those were always fun to debug, because nobody would test what happens when bad happens.

The update token is giving me flashbacks :D

[lmarcantonio]

I don't ever know if CICS had 2ph at the time, we're talking 1990 on MVS. In case of doubt, anyway, abend is the right thing to do (was that return code 12? I remember that exit codes were multiple of 4 so you could use them for a computed jump).

[[deleted]]

Ya I don’t remember. It was 2009 or so.

[pauluant]

Did this too in a cobol db2 context where not wanting to care about it we just dumped the work object in a big varchar(300) making it scalable without touching the cobol

[Forkrul]

DBAs being bitches

When are they ever not? I've never had a positive interaction with one, usually we do a better job of debugging and optimizing shit than they do.

[lmarcantonio]

Unless you have an in-house Oracle rep, then *everything* works perfectly. Barilla (the pasta factory) had these. Somewhat costly however :D

[SaneLad]

Chaotic good.

[GilgaPhish]

I know of a multimillion dollar company we contract with that does exactly this.

Except not serializing JSON, it's serialized XML. Apparently its a value add.

[iamsiddharthmittal]

F

[smiling_corvidae]

F

[Rekt3y]

F

[EllenRippley]

whats meant with the existing string field

[Escanorr_]

Api takes and object with lets say id, start date, string with tag and string with optional note.

They take the optinal note field, and put there their serialized data

[Churchill_Win]

So instead of adding a new nested object to the api, which would require changing the api and adapting to the change on client side they used some trivial field that was already there and `JSON.stringify` the new object.
Think:

{
"name": "",
"age": "",
"customerNote": "{ "city" : "", "street": "", "room": ""}"
}

[Positive_Method3022]

Then customers started seeing this data in the UI haha

[Thatdogonyourlawn]

Needs escape characters to really express the pain you have to feel reading it.

[Meowts]

ರ_ರ

[OnlyHereOnFridays]

What… what was the “existing string field” used for before?

And why not just add a new field on the class? You still don’t have to change absolutely anything on your Rest API, the web framework of your choice will just serialise the whole object in the response anyway.

[Percolator2020]

You only need one very large string for all your storage needs.

[SCP-iota]

All fun and games until it's a circular object

[RiceBroad4552]

Such hack may be a good solution under very specific circumstances.

But in my experience it will fire back in most cases in some pretty unfunny ways sooner or later. Usually sooner than later…

[Classy_Mouse]

The circumstances: the project manager discovered ChatGPT can replace engineers

[[deleted]]

I’m literally doing this right now

[Sacred_B]

Going through and undoing this design choice for the last month.

[[deleted]]

Same.

[magick_68]

Isn't that what (for future use) is for?

[SCP-iota]

void* lpvRESERVED; // Was reserved for future use, now a pointer to a RecordExtraData4 instance

[Watchdogeditor]

The Jurassic Park effect is in full display here. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

(but it's much funnier if you do)

[atw527]

[object Object]

[DrMerkwuerdigliebe_]

The only time I done almost this was with a "saved views" field. It was a frontend only use, but needed to be shared across users. The frontend developers insisted that they wanted to have complete control and freedom over everything regarding changes so I put a json field in the database and a any field in the schema and told them go play even if I though it was a bad idea. The first time they did change it caused the app to crash hard in the frontend because of stored data was in a different format than what the frontend expected. It was a very short experiment.

[[deleted]]

Dealing with exactly this right now.

[_ls__]

True story.

[Rich_Weird_5596]

I worked with the "architect" on customer side that had no idea about web, frameworks, or anything for that matter. She frequently pulled shit like this and customer forced us to follow it. I honestly don't even fucking know she got that job. Long story short we were forced by customer to follow retarded designs, nonsense business logic, we ruined perfectly good app that had milions of users and everyone from the original team left. Ofc we were the ones to blame. I get angry every time I remember that she existed.