Apparent bugs in MLS export files (v 3.3.0 and 3.3.1)
Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:18 pm
For users of the ward MLS export files, I have discovered and reported two apparent bugs in the HomeTeaching.csv and VisitingTeaching.csv files, which I believe began with MLS v 3.3.0:
HomeTeaching.csv
This file normally contains one record for each household in the ward, together with its assigned home teachers, if any, and everyone's contact info.
Now it also contains spurious records, with only the Household column populated in the form "Name Unknown, William James" where "Wiliam James" is the given name of a recent move-out.
Such records have long been maintained internally in MLS as hidden placeholders for computing the ward's quarterly HT statistics. But they did not use to appear in the HomeTeaching.csv export file. If this is by design -- I can't imagine why -- the release notes need to say so.
VisitingTeaching.csv
This file contains one record for each sister in the ward, together with her assigned visiting teachers, if any, and everyone's contact info.
The phone and email data for the Sister Taught, Visiting Teacher 1, Visiting Teacher 2 and Supervisor heretofore has followed a standard rule:
If the sister has an Individual Phone in Membership.csv, then use that
Else use the Household Phone if she has one
Else null string.
If the sister has an Individual E-mail in Membership.csv, then use that
Else use the Household E-mail if she has one
Else null string.
The maddening thing is that these business rules still seem to be followed for almost every sister in my ward. But for a handful, either the phone, email address or both in for Sister Taught, Visiting Teacher 1 or Visiting Teacher 2 are wrong. (I suspect that Supervisor might also be affected in some cases someday, but there are so few supervisors that we just didn't happen to trigger the bug in my ward.)
Other MLS users with whom I correspond have reported similar problems. There were no such problems found in MLS 3.2.4.
I can discern no pattern to why this bug occurs only for a handful of records, so I don't think it was just a matter of an unannounced design change in MLS. I recall that there was a serious bug reported in the content of VisitingTeaching.csv in an early beta build of 3.3.0 that was fixed in a later build. So it may be that this subtle bug was introduced in the process of patching that one.
This is a serious problem for some programs consuming this data. Because of the lack of a proper Individual ID or Household ID as appropriate to uniquely identify the persons in these records, the contact info is often used to minimize ambiguity. So when the phone or email data is wrong, the assignment might be missed altogether. I first found out about this issue from a user of Ward Tools.
HomeTeaching.csv
This file normally contains one record for each household in the ward, together with its assigned home teachers, if any, and everyone's contact info.
Now it also contains spurious records, with only the Household column populated in the form "Name Unknown, William James" where "Wiliam James" is the given name of a recent move-out.
Such records have long been maintained internally in MLS as hidden placeholders for computing the ward's quarterly HT statistics. But they did not use to appear in the HomeTeaching.csv export file. If this is by design -- I can't imagine why -- the release notes need to say so.
VisitingTeaching.csv
This file contains one record for each sister in the ward, together with her assigned visiting teachers, if any, and everyone's contact info.
The phone and email data for the Sister Taught, Visiting Teacher 1, Visiting Teacher 2 and Supervisor heretofore has followed a standard rule:
If the sister has an Individual Phone in Membership.csv, then use that
Else use the Household Phone if she has one
Else null string.
If the sister has an Individual E-mail in Membership.csv, then use that
Else use the Household E-mail if she has one
Else null string.
The maddening thing is that these business rules still seem to be followed for almost every sister in my ward. But for a handful, either the phone, email address or both in for Sister Taught, Visiting Teacher 1 or Visiting Teacher 2 are wrong. (I suspect that Supervisor might also be affected in some cases someday, but there are so few supervisors that we just didn't happen to trigger the bug in my ward.)
Other MLS users with whom I correspond have reported similar problems. There were no such problems found in MLS 3.2.4.
I can discern no pattern to why this bug occurs only for a handful of records, so I don't think it was just a matter of an unannounced design change in MLS. I recall that there was a serious bug reported in the content of VisitingTeaching.csv in an early beta build of 3.3.0 that was fixed in a later build. So it may be that this subtle bug was introduced in the process of patching that one.
This is a serious problem for some programs consuming this data. Because of the lack of a proper Individual ID or Household ID as appropriate to uniquely identify the persons in these records, the contact info is often used to minimize ambiguity. So when the phone or email data is wrong, the assignment might be missed altogether. I first found out about this issue from a user of Ward Tools.