1359 I Do Too Hate L0tus

Sunday, July 8, 2007

I friend has said that I can't say I hate Lotus. Lotus is a large library of applications and tools.

Sorry, but I can too say I hate Lotus! I can say anything I want. You are free to disagree.

I am willing to admit that what I really hate is the way the membership data base is set up at the museum. I mean, there are some incredible stupidities. For example, every record has a sequence number. When you create a new record, you have to ASSIGN a sequence number to it. It was not set up to automatically assign the next available number.

In the past, numbers must have been skipped, because there are, say, 2345 records, but the highest sequence number currently in use is 3456. You have to write down numbers as you use them, so you'll know what's the next available number. The first time I created a new record, it took me like 10 tries (hashing) to find the next number. Now I keep a list, but the first time someone else creates a record and picks a high number out of the air, I may be lost again.

My friend said I should be able to list the full database, and then just look at the list to see what the highest number is.

Nope. With the "cuts" and "tabs" we've got, there's no easy way to be sure you obtain the entire data base. It consists of mailing list, paid members, supporters, and advertisers, and all the "cuts" get you some combination of subsets, but not necessarily all.

Also, it's impossible to delete a record. You can't even blank out fields to take it effectively "off the lists", because then you get the error message that "xxx must not be blank", or "xxx must be a valid date". When I find the occasional duplicate record, I write down the sequence number, and then when I create the next new record, I just overwrite the fields in this record with the new information.

I'm sure there's some way to find the last record, and to delete records, there has to be, but I don't know it, and nobody else in the museum does either, and I'm not about to spend my own unpaid time! finding out.
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