RE: Coolest code you've ever written

["Nelson, Jim (RCIS)" <Jim.Nelson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Does it count if I ran the project?  (Still find myself questioning my move
into management)  

Coolest thing we did was write our own two-way replication between the
AS/400 and SQLAnywhere.  The products available at the time each had 'show
stopper' problems, so we wrote it ourselves.

Field level replication on the way down, file-level back up to the AS/400. 

Journalled the files to be replicated and wrote a program to read the
journal, determine the action and create an SQL statement for the action.
Inserts, updates (only the fields that changed), deletes - the whole thing.


Had a second program bundle up the SQL by remote database and place it in a
shared folder.  The agents would dial in, retrieve the SQL package, open the
SQLAnywhere database and process the SQL statements.

On the way up we had a trigger on each table to be replicated that wrote out
the dataless key of the row to be sent.  Before the agent connected with the
AS/400, a program ran to gather the 'actual' data from the database.  Sent
that data back to the AS/400 and added/updated/deleted into our database.

Also wrote conflict 'detection'  (decided not to try and resolve, just
notify) at each end to alert the user that a record was changed both
centrally and remote.

The process is being used by over 1000 agents in the field today, and we
never have to think about it - just make sure the servers are running to
route the data.

We still look back on this as the way a project should be run.  Took the
time to really understand the problem,  came up with a solution that we
believed in, worked our tails off and got it done on time, working right out
of the gate.  

Wish they could all be that way...

This has been fun!

JN


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