Today’s work was to fix logic errors in my application.

The problem is that overlapping data in files that normally deletes the older data and replaces it with the newer data is replacing all the older data even though it is earlier than what appears in the file.

Basically, I am troubleshooting by deleting all the data in my dev system, importing the first file, then stepping through the process of importing the second file to find where the problem is occurring in the code.

Typically in these situations, I still bill for the fixes as long as I can track the difference down to a change in the way the 3rd party folks generate their files has changed or is different in this case for some reason.

While I do my best to make the best assumptions, it seems invariably that someone changes their process in a way that is not handled by the assumptions. The problems are pretty infrequent though.

Anyway, I’m not done with figuring out the actual issue and what is causing the additional record deletes, but I will be able to figure it out tomorrow. I’m close!

Logic errors can be some of the most difficult to catch and fix because it simply results in unexpected data rather than run time or compile errors. And actually, it’s not really a logic error exactly if the underlying data structures have changed in my opinion.