Entry not submittable

[Waldbaer]

I have a new problem concerning two entries in my CDpedia database: Every time I try to contribute them, it seems to break the connection and they also won't get a dog tag. The connection won't work for any further contributions included in the same command, too.
Any ideas what I could try to do? BTW it's about the UPCs 5099709295225 and 5099709295126 (Star Wars 5&6).

Thanks for your help as always.

[Alex]

I have a new problem concerning two entries in my CDpedia database: Every time I try to contribute them, it seems to break the connection and they also won't get a dog tag. The connection won't work for any further contributions included in the same command, too.
Any ideas what I could try to do? BTW it's about the UPCs 5099709295225 and 5099709295126 (Star Wars 5&6).

Please send me Dcards for these entries to my email and I'll take a look at what the problem might be. However, looking at the logs I see errors for entries with one artist like this:

London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams, John Williams, London Symphony Orchestra, John Williams

That's an entry trying to post this as 1 single artist and it will produce some problems.

Please check the artist and your tracks in these 2 CDs and see if you have similar entries for a single artist.

[Waldbaer]

Hey, you were right. Both albums had each one title in the song list where the interpret was quite exactly like this. Sometimes I miss these when I downloaded title information, because they look the same as the ones around them since the display is cropped but not the field. I corrected it and now everything was submitted correctly.

Hm, maybe you can crop such fields if they are too long (or isn't that the problem?) and just display a short message if it happened while contributing...

Thanks for your help again!

[Conor]

Excellent debugging. I concur on the cropping, as it's rare that fields have such long text.

[Alex]

maybe you can crop such fields if they are too long

Unfortunately that's not the issue, it's a limitation of the Mysql server which results in an error that stops submission. It's hard to catch in code but I'll take a look at what else I can do here.

However, the onus does fall on the user to submit as good data as possible. There is a saying in database design:

Garbage in, garbage out.

I'm in no way implying that anyone is submitting garbage, all I'm saying is that the more careful we are about our entries and the cleaner they are, the better the data will be for everyone.

[Waldbaer]

However, the onus does fall on the user to submit as good data as possible. There is a saying in database design:

Garbage in, garbage out. ...

You're completely right, but I think correcting invisible data (which it was in this case) is to much for the normal user. But it's the developer's duty to always design their software for the DAU (=dumbest assumeable user)!

Anyways, now I know another possible problem that I may prevent/solve in the future and maybe even other users facing the same problem will read this thread so that's at least one step into the right direction.

PS: I'm now "addicted to Bruji". That went fast!

[Alex]

You're completely right, but I think correcting invisible data (which it was in this case) is to much for the normal user. But it's the developer's duty to always design their software for the DAU (=dumbest assumeable user)!

I agree completely, the software should be designed not to fail, that is what we strive to do but some bugs fall through the cracks. This one in particular is a weird one I'm still hunting down.

BTW, how was this data invisible? I'm curious.

[Waldbaer]

Well, it just looks the same as everything around it:


You only have a chance if you really know what to search for and hold mouse over the correct title. In this case, not even editing would directly show the problem because the repeated part is too long for the field.

I'm sure you're doing your best; this one really seems to be quite unusual.