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Re: How difficult is a payroll system?

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On 1/09/2016 12:27 PM, Rich wrote:
> Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote:
>> <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/canada-ibm-payroll-debacle-echoes-queensland-health/7802944>
>>
>> I find these stuff-ups hard to fathom. Just how complicated is a
>> payroll system?  Yes, it deals with lots of transactions, but each
>> one is surely straight-forward.
>
> Oftentimes the problem is that once one looks behind the curtain, what
> was a payroll system at one time has sprouted various weed like runners
> and now it is payroll plus time keeping plus "big brother" to verify
> that workers work what they should, plus it has built in email
> messaging, plus built in IM (becase, well, it's too hard to communicate
> the normal way, we need it 'embedded' in the system) plus it plots the
> Aztec calendar for the next 4000 years, synchronized with the Mayan
> calendar for reporting purposes, etc.
>
> I.e., serious feature creep such that no one thing ever gets finished
> before two more features that don't belong get bolted on the side until
> what was a payroll system is now just Frankenstien's neck.
>
> Couple that with current developers that seem to get hired for these
> types of contracts, who assume or produce:
>
>    1) legacy serivces that one calls for data never fail;
>    2) legacy services never return error codes;
>    3) should either of 1 or 2 occur, simply throw an exception;
>    4) process data in large batches;
>    5) should either of 1 or 2 happen, anywhere, in the batch of 1,000 or
>       10,000 or 100,000 separate items, and an exception gets thrown,
>       give up on the whole batch (i.e., a failure on number 1000 out of
>       1000 tosses out all the work done for number 1 through number
>       999);
>    6) perform multiple database updates to plural tables for data where
>       all of the updates have to be done or else the data's borked
>       without any wrapping SQL transaction (this is usually caused by
>       using an object-relational mapping framework because none of the
>       devs hired for these projects seem to understand SQL beyond
>       "select * from table where X = 10;");
>    7) build a task assignment system where a master sets up a job by
>       inserting data in a db table, and a separate slave picks it up
>       from the same table, and then forget that one has to set things up
>       such that the slave should not pick up the job until _after_ the
>       master has completed all the necessary updates (literal result of
>       of #6 above);
>    8) forget that when there are multiple slaves performing "thundering
>       herd" attacks on the db for work, that things have to be designed
>       such that only one worker picks up any one task (another side
>       effect of #6 above)
>
> And you get these outcomes.
>

Granted that over time systems can turn into unmaintainable labyrinths 
of code, but this was a new system.

Sylvia.

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How difficult is a payroll system? Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2016-09-01 12:04 +1000
  Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-09-01 02:27 +0000
    Re: How difficult is a payroll system? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2016-09-01 02:47 +0000
    Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2016-09-01 14:10 +1000
      Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-09-01 10:12 +0000
        Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-09-01 21:48 +0200
    Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2016-09-01 14:14 +1000
      Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-09-01 10:22 +0000
  Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-08-31 22:23 -0500
    Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2016-09-01 06:44 +0000
      Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-09-01 21:09 -0500
    Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Bob Eager <news0006@eager.cx> - 2016-09-01 08:15 +0000
      Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-09-01 10:27 +0000
        Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-09-01 21:16 -0500
        Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-09-04 22:43 +0200
          Re: How difficult is a payroll system? polygonum <rmoudndgers@vrod.co.uk> - 2016-09-06 07:28 +0100
      Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-09-01 21:18 +0200
        Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2016-09-01 21:23 +0000
          Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2016-09-03 08:17 +0100
            Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2016-09-03 12:17 +0000
              New systems for old (was Re: How difficult is a payroll system?) Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-09-03 22:12 -0500
                Re: New systems for old (was Re: How difficult is a payroll system?) RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2016-09-05 20:00 -0400
                Re: New systems for old (was Re: How difficult is a payroll system?) Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-09-05 19:36 -0500
                Re: New systems for old (was Re: How difficult is a payroll system?) Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-09-05 19:42 -0500
            Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-09-04 22:13 +0200
          Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-09-04 22:46 +0200
            Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2016-09-04 21:26 +0000
          Re: How difficult is a payroll system? "Kerr Mudd-John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2016-09-18 08:56 +0100
            Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-09-18 10:18 +0200
        Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-09-01 21:20 -0500
          Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-09-04 21:41 +0200
      Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2016-09-01 21:11 -0500
    Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-09-04 22:30 +0200
      Re: How difficult is a payroll system? Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2016-09-04 21:25 +0000

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