Circa 2005 I created a mobile app (for the honest-to-god-that’s-what-MS-named-it “WinCE” OS that later became Windows Mobile) that allowed workers to survey power line networks in the field and indicate all the trees that needed to be trimmed or removed. The app used a local SqlCE database and the workers would upload their recorded data at the end of the day back in their hotel rooms using Remote Data Access, an MS technology which allowed SqlCE databases to “sync” with a master Sql Server database.
It almost always worked flawlessly (100% during development, natch), except for once in a while when synced data would somehow end up in a weirdly corrupted, mangled state on the central server. Like, records that were lacking a primary key value (!), something that is basically impossible to achieve. I opened a ticket with MS support and we went back and forth on this for a few weeks until they basically said “yeah that’s fucked” and recommended that I modify my app to sync the same data multiple times to ensure it made it to the server correctly.
I actually had substantial faith in MS products up to that point (facepalm).
Circa 2005 I created a mobile app (for the honest-to-god-that’s-what-MS-named-it “WinCE” OS that later became Windows Mobile) that allowed workers to survey power line networks in the field and indicate all the trees that needed to be trimmed or removed. The app used a local SqlCE database and the workers would upload their recorded data at the end of the day back in their hotel rooms using Remote Data Access, an MS technology which allowed SqlCE databases to “sync” with a master Sql Server database.
It almost always worked flawlessly (100% during development, natch), except for once in a while when synced data would somehow end up in a weirdly corrupted, mangled state on the central server. Like, records that were lacking a primary key value (!), something that is basically impossible to achieve. I opened a ticket with MS support and we went back and forth on this for a few weeks until they basically said “yeah that’s fucked” and recommended that I modify my app to sync the same data multiple times to ensure it made it to the server correctly.
I actually had substantial faith in MS products up to that point (facepalm).