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Templates stored across a database is probably the worst thing I've seen repeatedly across projects. Just because a database can store everything doesn't mean i

by dx034 10y ago

Templates stored across a database is probably the worst thing I've seen repeatedly across projects. Just because a database can store everything doesn't mean it has to. Some people really seem(ed) to have an allergy to plain files for storage. A plain file with OS level caching will beat most (if not all) databases for static content. But doesn't sound as fancy, so it's probably harder to charge a lot of money for it.

mgkimsal 10y ago
Template in one database table I can live with (pros and cons, multiple front-ends, etc). One template broken up in to 12 tables requiring an 100+ line SQL statement with concat()s and HTML interspersed is insane. Had there been an API or utilities with it to manage it, it might have been manageable, but nope - just "write some queries". Also, just repeated your comment to a friend who said "that's the worst thing you've seen? can i have your job?" :)
- nicostouch 10y ago
  (blown away by all the responses to my original question!!!) Your story here makes me laugh if only because of a very painfully familiar memory. Luckily this wasn't a big production system but rather an internal tool (that I guess clients did also use but it wasn't part of 'production' per se) that was written entirely in perl_cgi filled with cryptic regular expressions written in complete spaghetti code and it would concatenate together entire webpages that had bits of them rendered by including the contents of files strewn all over the file system and of course the logic to concatenate all the html together was strewn across a fistful of files which were in disparate locations. In short I was once asked to make a simple change to some html and after 5 days of reading through perl_cgi and developing a pure hatred for Larry Wall, I decided to do a java re-write that took 3 days. I mean... crikey. Haha.
  - RUG3Y 10y ago
    We have a similar application in PHP. By the time I've traced through all of the included files that are touched by a particular function, I've forgotten what I'm looking for. It's truly a nightmare.
rbirkby 10y ago
Wait until you see a Turing complete DSL programming language stored line-by-line in rows in a database table and executed by pl/SQL using cursors, locking the entire execution to prevent concurrency.
- nicostouch 10y ago
  This is why we can't develop nice things.
Terr_ 10y ago
I'm dealing with one internal project where this happens because there's an artificial IT/build distinction between "emergency" code push and "casual" raw database change. This means lots of business-rule crap gets softcoded into the database or ini files (increasing complexity and bug-risk) just to support a hypothetical future where somebody needs it changed without a full sprint cycle.
bandrami 10y ago
And you aren't kidding about "repeatedly". Personally I associate it with the late 1990s/early oughts and ColdFusion; I think one of the early CF frameworks really encouraged it, and it kind of just stuck from there, particularly in Government web work. But it's probably wider than that...

by dx034 10y ago

mgkimsal 10y ago

Template in one database table I can live with (pros and cons, multiple front-ends, etc). One template broken up in to 12 tables requiring an 100+ line SQL statement with concat()s and HTML interspersed is insane. Had there been an API or utilities with it to manage it, it might have been manageable, but nope - just "write some queries". Also, just repeated your comment to a friend who said "that's the worst thing you've seen? can i have your job?" :)

nicostouch 10y ago
(blown away by all the responses to my original question!!!) Your story here makes me laugh if only because of a very painfully familiar memory. Luckily this wasn't a big production system but rather an internal tool (that I guess clients did also use but it wasn't part of 'production' per se) that was written entirely in perl_cgi filled with cryptic regular expressions written in complete spaghetti code and it would concatenate together entire webpages that had bits of them rendered by including the contents of files strewn all over the file system and of course the logic to concatenate all the html together was strewn across a fistful of files which were in disparate locations. In short I was once asked to make a simple change to some html and after 5 days of reading through perl_cgi and developing a pure hatred for Larry Wall, I decided to do a java re-write that took 3 days. I mean... crikey. Haha.
- RUG3Y 10y ago
  We have a similar application in PHP. By the time I've traced through all of the included files that are touched by a particular function, I've forgotten what I'm looking for. It's truly a nightmare.

rbirkby 10y ago

Wait until you see a Turing complete DSL programming language stored line-by-line in rows in a database table and executed by pl/SQL using cursors, locking the entire execution to prevent concurrency.

nicostouch 10y ago
This is why we can't develop nice things.

Terr_ 10y ago

I'm dealing with one internal project where this happens because there's an artificial IT/build distinction between "emergency" code push and "casual" raw database change. This means lots of business-rule crap gets softcoded into the database or ini files (increasing complexity and bug-risk) just to support a hypothetical future where somebody needs it changed without a full sprint cycle.

bandrami 10y ago

And you aren't kidding about "repeatedly". Personally I associate it with the late 1990s/early oughts and ColdFusion; I think one of the early CF frameworks really encouraged it, and it kind of just stuck from there, particularly in Government web work. But it's probably wider than that...