88Pro Thinking

I recently got down the book The Pragmatic Programmer from Amazon. I am probably quite late in getting hold of the book but I am glad that at least I have it now. The book is great. An absolute ‘eye’ and ‘mind’ opener. When you start reading the book, most of the time you realize “Oh, yeah! I know what it feels like, to go through that”. One thing I understood after reading the book is, that the day to day difficulties every programmer faces are universal.

The chapter Reversibility (Chapter 2 Section 9) starts with a quote

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea if it is the only one you have.”
By Emil-Auguste Chartier

Right after reading that quote, I had one of those realizations; “Oh, yeah! I know what it feels like, to go through that”. Recently I was working on a RMI client/server based application. The initial design was to load the RMI client to an Oracle Database, so that it could be invoked using a SQL stored procedure.

Everything works fine, but the moment you load the RMI client to the Oracle Database and invoke through it through the SP, you are thrown an OutOfMemory Error. After days of unsuccessfully battling and testing the error through different configurations, we filed a Technical Assistance Request (TAR) with Oracle. Within 10 days of submitting the TAR, the error was announced as a bug and an internal bug was filed at Oracle and reported it will be fixed in the next Oracle release 10g.

Fortunately, when the problem first occurred, I realized that we might face a roadblock ahead and started to reverse the design and move the RMI Client out, so that it could reside outside Oracle. At the time, I felt that I may be wasting my time on this backup solution, however now I am quite glad we had an alternative, and can imagine how difficult it would have been to meet the dead line if we had not had one.

It doesn’t really matter where the bug is your fault or someone else’s – it is still your problem, and it still needs to be fixed. (Tip 24 from The Pragmatic Programmer)


posted by 88Pro / Saturday, January 17, 2004