4 ms·

Not at all the same thing I admit, but the company I work for has a product that limits the number of transactions (per user) to 1. Where "transaction" is rough

Not at all the same thing I admit, but the company I work for has a product that limits the number of transactions (per user) to 1. Where "transaction" is roughly equivalent to an HTTP request. So if you run a query that takes 30 seconds, get bored, open up a new tab to do something else in the product, your new tab will hang until the transaction in the previous tab has completed. I hate it. There is a special URL that will kill your running transaction. All of the engineers know it and have it bookmarked, but it's undocumented.

vasco 2y ago
A manager thought that they could reduce scope on implementing proper rate limiting after a postmortem or how does this appear?
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  Maybe some transactions write state, instead of merely querying?
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  Maybe too many people were overloading the system by opening too many tabs, making it worse. Sounds like this application needs basic fine tuning (I bet there's 0 indexing on the database, and who knows what else).
od1nos 2y ago
ServiceNow?
knodi123 2y ago
Ha. When I moved into my town, the public library's online book search was only turned on from 9-5, monday through saturday. Apparently it was so unstable they didn't want anyone trying to use it unless they had an IT guy on hand? I'm guessing? Anyway, they eventually outsourced to bibliocommons, but oy, what a ridiculous limitation to have as late as 2007.
- Doxin 2y ago
  A local pizza place has a website that closes outside of business hours. Which is infuriating if you're trying to figure out business hours in the first place.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    So its running on a computer in their restaurant, and someone shuts it off when they leave. : - )
    - Doxin 2y ago
      Oh no not at all. The site just shows a notice that the site is closed. None of the other pages work anymore but the server is clearly still running.
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    There is a Dutch chain of baby necessities which is owned by a fundamentalist Christian. You wouldn't know except for the infuriating message their websites (there where some mergers and I think this affects two large online shops) on Sunday, all day long, are closed because of the Sabbath. A multi million Euro business which just shuts down all of its websites on Sunday. The owner can apparently afford it, because I ran into this when we made a baby and was comparison shopping for a stroller. Obviously you move on and go somewhere else. The owner literally misses sales for his beliefs. Now I don't want people working Sundays shipping stuff people bought, but those websites can do their thing perfectly without anyone lifting a finger until they come into work on Monday to a stack of orders to handle.
    - burntwater 2y ago
      B&H (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ https://www.bhphotovideo.com/) is somewhat like this. Super popular business, but you can't order online on Saturdays. You can browse the website, just not place an order. Their physical store is also closed on Saturdays, and closes early on Fridays. They also close for days/weeks at a time for Jewish holidays.
sentientslug 2y ago
This sounds like ServiceNow… if it is I’d love to know that special URL.
- retzkek 2y ago
  Seems to be documented, surprisingly: https://<INSTANCE>.service-now.com/cancel_my_transaction.do https://<INSTANCE>.service-now.com/cancel_my_transaction.do https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0656014 https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm... Or you can type “cancel_my_transaction.do” in the navigator filter bar. Related tip: you can quickly bring up any table by typing “table_name.list” (s/.do/.list/ from the single-item url) there instead of poking around for a link. “sys_user.list” is probably the one I use most often.
  - sentientslug 2y ago
    This is so awesome. Thank you for sharing!
hifromwork 2y ago
A national train company where I live in limits the number of transactions (per user) to 1. Where "transaction" is roughly equivalent to a browser tab - the website will aggressively scold you if you try to open another tab and refuse to load! I think it's realated to the session mess they have in the backend but it's very annoying (especially when buying train tickets and comparing offers, of all things).
- NikolaNovak 2y ago
  A lot of ERPs try to limit the number of tabs; I don't fully understand the reason - it may be because of the stuff they do in the browser before syncing to the database at submission/commit time, so they want to avoid apparent inconsistency?
  - DANmode 2y ago
    It's because the person sipping champagne with the software vendor isn't checking the performance of features before signing.
willcipriano 2y ago
I'd wager the overhead of manging a mutex to see if a user is currently using their transaction is greater than the occasional second transaction a user may occasionally invoke in most situations.

vasco 2y ago

A manager thought that they could reduce scope on implementing proper rate limiting after a postmortem or how does this appear?

knallfrosch 2y ago
Maybe some transactions write state, instead of merely querying?
giancarlostoro 2y ago
Maybe too many people were overloading the system by opening too many tabs, making it worse. Sounds like this application needs basic fine tuning (I bet there's 0 indexing on the database, and who knows what else).

od1nos 2y ago

ServiceNow?

knodi123 2y ago

Ha. When I moved into my town, the public library's online book search was only turned on from 9-5, monday through saturday. Apparently it was so unstable they didn't want anyone trying to use it unless they had an IT guy on hand? I'm guessing? Anyway, they eventually outsourced to bibliocommons, but oy, what a ridiculous limitation to have as late as 2007.

Doxin 2y ago
A local pizza place has a website that closes outside of business hours. Which is infuriating if you're trying to figure out business hours in the first place.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  So its running on a computer in their restaurant, and someone shuts it off when they leave. : - )
  - Doxin 2y ago
    Oh no not at all. The site just shows a notice that the site is closed. None of the other pages work anymore but the server is clearly still running.
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  There is a Dutch chain of baby necessities which is owned by a fundamentalist Christian. You wouldn't know except for the infuriating message their websites (there where some mergers and I think this affects two large online shops) on Sunday, all day long, are closed because of the Sabbath. A multi million Euro business which just shuts down all of its websites on Sunday. The owner can apparently afford it, because I ran into this when we made a baby and was comparison shopping for a stroller. Obviously you move on and go somewhere else. The owner literally misses sales for his beliefs. Now I don't want people working Sundays shipping stuff people bought, but those websites can do their thing perfectly without anyone lifting a finger until they come into work on Monday to a stack of orders to handle.
  - burntwater 2y ago
    B&H (https://www.bhphotovideo.com/ https://www.bhphotovideo.com/) is somewhat like this. Super popular business, but you can't order online on Saturdays. You can browse the website, just not place an order. Their physical store is also closed on Saturdays, and closes early on Fridays. They also close for days/weeks at a time for Jewish holidays.

sentientslug 2y ago

This sounds like ServiceNow… if it is I’d love to know that special URL.

retzkek 2y ago
Seems to be documented, surprisingly: https://<INSTANCE>.service-now.com/cancel_my_transaction.do https://<INSTANCE>.service-now.com/cancel_my_transaction.do https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0656014 https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm... Or you can type “cancel_my_transaction.do” in the navigator filter bar. Related tip: you can quickly bring up any table by typing “table_name.list” (s/.do/.list/ from the single-item url) there instead of poking around for a link. “sys_user.list” is probably the one I use most often.
- sentientslug 2y ago
  This is so awesome. Thank you for sharing!

hifromwork 2y ago

A national train company where I live in limits the number of transactions (per user) to 1. Where "transaction" is roughly equivalent to a browser tab - the website will aggressively scold you if you try to open another tab and refuse to load! I think it's realated to the session mess they have in the backend but it's very annoying (especially when buying train tickets and comparing offers, of all things).

NikolaNovak 2y ago
A lot of ERPs try to limit the number of tabs; I don't fully understand the reason - it may be because of the stuff they do in the browser before syncing to the database at submission/commit time, so they want to avoid apparent inconsistency?
- DANmode 2y ago
  It's because the person sipping champagne with the software vendor isn't checking the performance of features before signing.

willcipriano 2y ago

I'd wager the overhead of manging a mutex to see if a user is currently using their transaction is greater than the occasional second transaction a user may occasionally invoke in most situations.