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106 Comments
- sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -6/+43You type pretty well for an eight month old.
- aahpandasrun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33This is an example of bad database design. This is a beginner error. However, shouldn't it recognize it properly since they have different names?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+40How hard can differentiating them by social security be? I wouldn't trust my insurance with a startup company.
- Jofaba, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25Any insurance company that knowingly allows you to fudge your legal information should NOT be trusted with your money.
- MAdaXe42, on 10/12/2007, -5/+25The design was probably made in order to accommodate for people who didn't have SS#s (i.e. new born infants), although I agree, it does suck - they should do a full name match at the least.
M - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Shockingly incompetent software design!
- saska, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16First+Last+DOB would work as a composite key until George Foreman had twins...
- sweetdeals, on 10/12/2007, -8/+23It's called a "Social Insurence Number". 9 digits.
xxx-xxx-xxx - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Captain Obvious to the rescue!
- codyfrisch, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22It was Sun Life Canada if you read the article. I'm sure they have some sort of number (national health "care" for example). But i am guessing they don't have xxx-xx-xxxx like we do here in the states, called a SSN.
- kd1s, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18Don't even need that. All you need is a unique identifier, say like a combination first+last name and dob. But that'd be a composite primary key which is sort of unwieldy to deal with.
Best would have been a sequential auto-increment tagged as primary key. That way you could have same first, same last, same dob but separate records.
I really love the unintended consequences of bad database design. - sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20Thanks for clearing that up h00paj00, I would never have been able to figure that out without you.
- CountBrass, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Don't know about the US and Canada but here in the UK your National Insurance Number (NINO) is supposed to be kept secure not handed around like Candy. It's the primary id number used by most Government departments to identify your records and it's the number one piece of information an identity thief would like to get their hands on.
- littlebluedevil, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Sun Life isn't exactly a "startup"
- arnar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10@h00paj00: I would say db design is part of software design. The analogy is also not very good - db lies at the heart of many software systems but the bumper has almost nothing to do with the interior.
On another note, this design flaw is so obvious it might have been an oversight rather than stupidity. - quine, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Re: United States Social Security - SSN's are not unique either. They're recycled. Nightmarish, eh?
- anonatron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@aahpandasrun
It seems from the story that last name & dob are the key fields, I mean what are they chances of TWO people having the same last name being born on the same day??? Oh... wait... - wilf_brim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6One of you needs to move. Or have a gunfight at noon. Whichever. "This town ain't big enough for the both of us..."
- cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9So a CSR rep says something, and its assumed the CSR is right? Sorry, but in my experience a CSR is far less likely to understand his/her system than a DBA is likely to make such a stupid mistake like this.
On top of that, the person who shared the experience may have not gotten the facts straight. For example, say this happened:
CSR says: "Our software is undergoing transition and changes. As such, IT had a temporary bug that will be fixed in 2-3 days. Our temporary fix is to use a different/false birthday. No problemo though, we're making a list of all the names entered as such (very few). We'll manually correct them all by weeks end.
What Customer hears; "Blah, blah, blah, blah, your child is not deserving of his/her own birthday in our system". - je12u, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I wonder if Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger had the same problem?
- ChoadNamath, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"Re: United States Social Security - SSN's are not unique either. They're recycled. Nightmarish, eh?"
Not really. There are only a billion unique numbers, you run out eventually. Recycling a number isn't like recycling underwear. - whiledo, on 03/25/2009, -1/+6@quine
"SSN's are not unique either. They're recycled. Nightmarish, eh?"
What's nightmarish about someone getting the same SSN years after I'm dead?
You've never actuallly HAD a nightmare, have you? - daybreaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If the company doesnt fix this db problem soon, that family is going to run into some serious problems if they ever need to use the insurance for the one who they had to list as May instead of April... Imagine going to the doctor, and youre filling out paperwork, and you put in his real date of birth, and when the hospital checks his insurance, they deny the claim, because the date of birth doesnt match. I bet you anything that this could very likely happen.
Also: a lot of people on here dont seem to quite be getting what the actual problem with the system was, based on all thee comments of "Oh, I wouldnt trust the CSR" or "Oh, thats an easy db fix"... The way the system is set up, it identifies you by Last name, Plan Number, Birth Month, Birth Year. I would be HUBERXXXXXX1081. If I had a twin, he would be the same. thats why they needed to input it as TWINXXXX0406 and TWINXXXX0506. So the system could differentiate them. But while the system is now able to differentiate them, as I mentioned above it could cause a world of problems in actually trying to make a claim to use that insurance. - halavais, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4> Don't know about the US and Canada but here in the UK your National Insurance Number (NINO) is supposed to be kept secure not handed around like Candy.
That was certainly the original idea in the US, but it's rapidly gone the way of the dodo. Now you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to avoid using the SSN, and so most people just use it as an identifier on everything from car loans to gym memberships. - Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Not everyone in Canada has an SIN... you don't really need one until you can get a job, so I never applied for my SIN until shortly before turning 16.
- kevinmotel, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11Dugg for having the same birthday as me.
- NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Remember that name, everyone. "Sun Life". A demonstrably incompetent insurance carrier.
-jcr - ray901, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3lol - yes it will be interesting if the kids need to use their insurance for some reason - the one with the borked birthdate will probably get nothing as the insurance can just say that his info is invalid.
- transeunte, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Not dugg just for a change.
- Phil246, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Not necessarily, it depends on how the database is set up to validate date fields.
- ashleycharee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@szembek -- because the system doesn't have the option for day of the month in the identifier -- it uses last name, birth month, and birth year.
- GiJoeBob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Every database textbook covers this in the first chapter and most even use Social Security Numbers as the example - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_key.
Very lazy programming. - lroche, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3SunLife Canada is not a start up company. They've been around for awhile. And we have social insurance numbers in Canada and not social security numbers. Don't know about social security, but I don't think most parents get a SIN for they're kids right away. I didn't get a number until I was 10.
- umdmatto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Noob database error I agree. it's called the "primary key " #1 most important part of a database design
- ratbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Twins are always getting shafted, speaking as one myself. From getting dual birthday presents (I only got one of these, but you don't mind sharing it, right? I mean afterall, you are, like, the same person pretty much, right?), to having your records getting mixed up in the legal system and having to spend hours explaining to the clerk that my twin is the criminal and not me, to having to deal with the most ignorant questions in the history of mankind (If I punch your brother, do you feel the pain too??).
- krinn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Social Security Numbers in the US are not reused or issued to another person. At least not yet anyway.
What often happens though is someone mistypes a number or just makes one up. Then years later when someone actually gets assigned that number, they find in some database there's already a record for someone else under that number. This is a problem for banks, credit bureaus, and insurance companies because they don't want to delete the old record, just in case it might be legitimate, but they need to make a new correct entry, and they often screw it up. - anonatron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And then if the babies were born less than 30 seconds apart? You have essentially the same problem, two people CAN be born at the exact same time with the exact same last name. Hell if it is a nationwide insurance company, it is possible and even probable to have 2 people born with the exact same name, first last and middle at least once a year.
- JohnyD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is why smart people normalize their database. You should see some of the conversations I have with idiots I work with. "We don't need anything as fancy as a 'normalized' database JohnyD."
....whoever built their system should be flogged... - daybreaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2yeah, for example if there was an upfront pool of $1000 per person before you have to pay out of pocket, Both twins would be drawing from that same pool, as opposed to each having their own. As I posted below, though, fudging the birth month could lead to some other issues in making an insurance claim.
- Canthros, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There's really no good reason for not having unique row ids in the database. Actually, they should probably issue some sort of per-person guid that could be moved between systems when they upgrade next. They've made a poor choice of key, because their software designers didn't think quite far enough. End of story.
- iamdecal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2we had the reverse when my first son was born, the DHSS where more than happy to send us two lots of child benefit[1] - both for the same kid, they just assumed we had twins and liked the name so much we gave it to both of them (including a middle name)
[1] for the benefit of foreign types
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/childbenefit/index.htm - celopes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Surrogate keys are good things. (tm)
- b0bby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This kind of stupid crap happens all the time. I have a problem with the DMV because there's a guy in NJ with my same (very common) last name & birthdate who has lost his license. That is enough for my state to refuse to renew my license, because that's all the reciprocity system uses as an identifier. Every 4 years I have to convince some numbskull at the DMV that no, I'm not that guy in NJ, your system is just poorly designed. Every time I have to go there I marvel that in a country where high powered semi automatic weapons are readily available you don't have weekly DMV shootups...
- reevesfarm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I live in a small town and there just happens to be another woman with the same name and birth month & year. Every time I have a prescription filled I have to double check to make sure that it is being filled under my insurance and I have to monitor submissions to my Insurer to make sure that the requests are not for her. She was drunk and had a nasty accident that left her in the ICU, before this could even make our local paper people were calling my parents to console them, the casserole brigade was cranking open cans of cream of ______ (insert any soup here). Someone finally called me, but wow what a freaky couple of days.
- jetsetgo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2""Noob database error I agree. it's called the "primary key " #1 most important part of a database design"
Actually a primary key is actually quite meaningless unless you've achieved the desired level of normal form. I suggest 3rd or Boyce Cobb normal form for most purposes. Any retard can put in a uid field but that hardly means that your database design is decent."
Forget all of that. This database clearly didn't even pass the *first* normal form. This structure is a recipe for disaster. ID theft spree anyone? - EmmEff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm ever so glad that good programmers like myself are stuck in dead-end jobs working on menial tasks while stupid ***** like the consultant that implemented this database are driving around in their beamers talking on the phone to the next unsuspecting customer.
- epilonious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1somebody get those babies a GUID!!
- shellnet, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I just like hearing about problems with Canadian health insurance. So many people hold it as an ideal archetype. I'm sure this problem could occur in any system, but, when I close my eyes and imagine Canadians, I still see them as they are portrayed in South Park. Sad, but true.
- arnar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@h00paj00: I didn't say db design was part of business or user layers - but they're all part of "software design".
Anyways, I feel silly arguing about this :o) - eugeneandbobo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thats brilliance at its f-ing finest
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