Bitching about a lack of specification isn't really anything new, but I find myself with little else to do at the moment.
To tease the requirements from the client, I've really outdone myself this time. I'm working with a contract management system, and
depending on different input, it should do various things automatically. So, I've enumerated the input factors, and have for loops
nested 4 deep to hit all the possibilites, printing them to the screen with handy links. My hope is that the client can then
click through and say "that one is behaving badly, it should do X". The problem arises when the loops generate 36 test cases,
running 216 queries involving nasty things like triggers and nested cursors, and the whole process takes 10 minutes to complete.
Hence, the blog entry.
The really depressing part is I'm pretty sure the client isn't going to go through these cases "OK"ing them or rejecting them, and its
just another in a long line of tools I've made to get around the lack of a proper spec. Luckily, they're paying by the hour, so the
only price being paid is in my patience and sanity. Oh, and this is another impossible deadline project, so while I'm trying to
figure out if its what they want, they're shitting bricks because its not done.
Ok, end rant.