Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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TragicMonkey said:
I guess I'd have one field for the full name, in the order it's normally put. Then several separate fields for name elements, each with a number. Then another field that stores what order those name element fields are supposed to go. Maybe a couple of fields like that, representing the order to put the name elements for official use, for direct address, etc. And of course title fields, suffix fields, etc.
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You're giving me flashbacks to when I worked on an email server that used X.400 standards, where there were multiple fields for names for each user (forenames, family name, generation, etc.), and both an ASCII (or possibly ISO 8859) and Unicode version of each one, and for any one user, they might have neither, one or both versions of each field configured for their account, and when they logged in they might specify a mix of the ASCII or Unicode versions, and I had to find the correct account...
 
zooterkin said:
You're giving me flashbacks to when I worked on an email server that used X.400 standards, where there were multiple fields for names for each user (forenames, family name, generation, etc.), and both an ASCII (or possibly ISO 8859) and Unicode version of each one, and for any one user, they might have neither, one or both versions of each field configured for their account, and when they logged in they might specify a mix of the ASCII or Unicode versions, and I had to find the correct account...
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Well obviously there should have been a coalesce somewhere to grab the contents of those fields in order of priority.

I admit I only just started using coalesce last year and now I can't stop, I love it so much!
 
TragicMonkey said:
Ugh. Flashbacks to years ago when I worked with a particularly stupid application that would not accept anything other than a 5 digit numeric ZIP code. We did business with Canada, which uses six digits alternating alphabetical and numeric.
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Do you have an example of one of these alphabetic digits we use in our postal codes?
 
Blue Mountain said:
Do you have an example of one of these alphabetic digits we use in our postal code?
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I think it's clear from context what I meant. It would have been confusing to say "alternating alphanumerics" when half are alpha and half numeric. "Character" sounded too vague. But thanks so much for your criticism of my word choices, I look forward to basking in the brilliancy of your undoubtedly perfect posts.
 
Hey, if your systems don't have a 'name type' field, you're probably doing it wrong.

Just of the top of my head:

Maiden name, married name, alias, graffiti tag, preferred name, religious name, public name, private name, nickname, formal name, psuedonym/nom de plume...

For an example, if your system deals with Thai people, depending on context, you may always deal with them by their public name, or their private name.

And, again depending on nature of your system, you may have to deal with pre and post nominals.

Addresses can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned.

But like names, my last system also had to deal with 'address type' and the varying 'address format' that comes with each type.

Think of 'location' and method for contacting this person/organisation for every kind of 'address' you can imagine.

:D
 
novaphile said:
Hey, if your systems don't have a 'name type' field, you're probably doing it wrong.

Just of the top of my head:

Maiden name, married name, alias, graffiti tag, preferred name, religious name, public name, private name, nickname, formal name, psuedonym/nom de plume...

For an example, if your system deals with Thai people, depending on context, you may always deal with them by their public name, or their private name.

And, again depending on nature of your system, you may have to deal with pre and post nominals.
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"Thanks for the report, but one question: did you accidentally pull the 'stripper name' field?"
"No, I meant to include that one."
"Okaaaay. Well, thanks, Mike."
"Please call me 'Vanilla Beef'."
 
Blue Mountain said:
Do you have an example of one of these alphabetic digits we use in our postal codes?
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Don't be so pedantic, Blue. You know very well that you are often asked to enter "the first three digits of your Postal Code" in all sorts of on-line forms here in the Great White North. I get rejected when I try. There are other sites that ask you to enter your "FSA". I had to Google that when I was first asked. It's certainly not part of our common nomenclature.

Back when the Internet was young I got an error when trying to enter my Postal Code in a form on a site of a Big US Corporation (it had already accepted that I was in Canada). When I protested to Support they eventually connected me by phone with a staff programmer somewhere in the US and he was quite happy to listen and fix the issue. This was in the days before the useless chatbots supposedly "answer" all questions.
 
Wudang said:
I would never have imagined how complex addresses could be until.i started working with the damned things.
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After working with addresses for many years, I started to get complacent...

... then I had to start working with various inter agency data sharing models.

<Dr Smith Voice>

Oh the pain, the pain.

</Dr Smith Voice>
 
JoeMorgue said:
The problem is "Fields" are a double edged sword.



You have three separate fields for First Name, Middle Name, and Last Name.



What happens when you someone doesn't have a middle name? Or four names? Or a hyphenated last name? Or comes from a culture where the traditional form is to put the last name first?



The more "structured" something is the better it works when everything fits into the structure, but it breaks a lot harder when you have to deal with something that doesn't.



Sadly we aren't allowed to dictate rules to society based on what makes data entry easier. If it was up to IT everyone would have First and Last names of the exact same number of characters and nobody would be allowed to have the same name.
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People have been working on these problems for years and I believe there are workable solutions available.

Addresses get very messy but every place seems to have an address now when I order something online.
 
Wudang said:
You might also need multiple surnames. My pal's surname in most DBs is Kusners. He spells it Kušners so you need to allow for other codesets. People get married, change names, family names in Gaelic regions can be spelled one way in family but be spelled in an Anglicized form officially. My middle name for example can be Donald or Dòmhnall.
For official use the "normal" format of <family name> comma <other names> seems to work well especially as it disambiguates Chinese names where some keep the family name first form and others adopt western form.
You can probably visualize the schema.
One workaround is to separate a "person" id representing an actual person then have that link to various other records. For example, the person is Ho, Gah Wing. This can link to a "pupil" record which records that a "Ho, John GW" attended school Madeup High from 2001 to 2003.
It's not a problem a competent software engineer shouldn't be able to find a lot of information on readily.
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To summarise the summary of the summary, people are a problem.
 
So the changeover Genesys is happening at the end of this week.

I'm not looking forward to it, and it's not entirely because I get anxiety over new things. I can see many ways in which it is likely to be problematic.
 
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