Things can always get worse, database edition

[dorchadas]

So we've switched over to the new new database at work and it is a shit show. Just unbelievably bad. Here is a litany of my complaints:

• There's no actual work queue UI, so I'm working of a hastily-built database output in a totally different system where I have to manually delete table entries after they're done.
  
• Everything displayed on a single screen in the 20-year-old database requires clicking through 6-8 screens in the new database.
  
• You might remember the old new database and some checkboxes for important settings that we needed for our work, that we couldn't default to on and had to click every single time we performed any task? Well, so does the new new database.
  
• I just learned moments ago that when searching in the new new database, I can display birth city but not current city, which--since most information we get doesn't contain "city of birth" as info--is basically useless.
  
• Search in the new new database doesn't work unless you search in ALL CAPS.
  
• Search is missing critical fields like "address" and "birthdate" by default. I made my own search query with those, which fortunately is functionality we have, but I find it illuminating that we told them multiple times those were vital pieces of information and they're not in as search fields by default.
  
• Even though I can add those fields to the search, I can't add them to the information displayed about a record. That information is available, but requires--you guessed it--more screens and more clicking.
  
• There's no way to search within the results of any search query without individually scrolling through and looking at all of them. The only function is to order columns alphabetically.
  
• Settings are not preserved. If I change "display 100" to "display 200," not only do I have to do that every time I search, I have do that every time I reorder a column.
  
• There's no way to display critical information in multiple places. If I'm comparing two people's data, I better remember the data of one source because it's impossible to see it while looking at the other source and I can't sick back to the first source without losing my search results.

That's from using it for 45 minutes and completing one (1) task. I'm in the middle of trying to complete task 2, but the database is trying to punch me in the dick the entire time.

I would actually say it's basically nonfunctional. Tasks that took me a max of 30 seconds and were entirely keyboard-controlled previously now take 10-15 minutes of clicking through multiple windows, trying to remember multiple discrete pieces of info and compare them, clicking back and forth repeatedly, trying to find where information that was once available at a glance is hidden...it's trash.

Some of you might remember the story of the data director in a meeting taking requests for the new database, and one my co-workers said "It has to work!" so the data director turned to the board and wrote MUST WORK, circling it multiple times.

Oops.

Will any of this ever be fixed? Who knows! The problems with the old new database were never fixed, so I'm not confident. But in that case, I hope work is only with my output dropping roughly...95%. Conservatively.

Looking forward to us just going back to the old database again because it actually works!

Edit: The birthdate search field won't search unless you include the birth time! Who coded this?!

Comments

[corvi]

... why did they switch? Is it somehow better for some other group?

[dorchadas]

I don't know. Everyone in my section seems to dislike it too, and generally when I talk to my old boss (who's working pretty hard on implementing it), he just seems resigned to it--admitting that it's not good but upper management wants it so it's happening.

The old database does need replacement, since it's twenty years old and running on a bunch of bandaids, but this is the second try of replacing it with some pre-existing web-based app platform adapted to our use cases that really doesn't fit. The old database was purpose-built just for us, and considering how much money our department makes, you'd think they could do that again instead of repeatedly trying to ram square web-pegs into round holes, but...

[corvi]

Ah, yeah. :/ Sounds weirdly familiar.

I used to work on simulation software for the radiation oncology department at a hospital. The software was used to plan treatment regimens where patients would be zapped by radiation beams coming in from various directions such that the beams would all intersect at the tumour and destroy it, but because they came in from all angles, all the flesh around the tumour would only get hit by one or two of the beams and not take a deadly dose. The hospital had built its own software and had been working on it for decades, and there was always this tension of whether switching to a modern commercial package and getting all kinds of new capabilities was worth losing the benefits of building it exactly to our needs. (We switched a year or two after my time. I don't know how it went, but I've certainly wondered.)

I guess it's a problem of long-lasting institutions. Sigh. Good luck.

[draxil]

"progress"

[symbioid]

Holy fuck that's like... our level of fail at my job. And we have COBOL/IBM shit to deal with. I imagine your is all modern API/Reactive Javascript blah blah Agile web crap?

Do you know anything about the dev processes?

Why do I have a bad feeling that the people who are managing this are the type of people who will deflect blame and not take action to fix obvious problems.

If these are just your basic usability issues, can you imagine what else lies beneath? Damn, I feel.

[dorchadas]

Yeah, it's a web-based front end, so RIP all my keyboard shortcuts and hello dozens of clicks to do one task.

The dev process sonds like a nightmare--like, the company that's making the frontend to access the data isn't the company that's processing the actual data, and they keep getting into usability vs. security arguments and everyone (read: us) loses.