UK Coronavirus tests not reported due to “max file size”

[treeman79]

Awhile ago I had to drive an hour to help out with a file that was was “mangled”

Person had opened cab file in excel. First Column wasn’t wide enough to display phone number properly.

This person had a masters degree in Computer Science from same school I had attended.

I’ve worked off and on in health care for decades. This level is sadly common.

Because of HIPPA, it’s also nearly impossible to work in anything approaching sanity.

Getting stuff done is straight up not important to most People with access to data. In fact it’s more like begging the gods and making offerings to get a hint at what you might need.

I might be a bit frustrated at being Responsible for systems that are down, and being told flat out I can’t even access them.

[azalemeth]

I very much wonder if this will ultimately come down in some way to yet another limitation of Microsoft Excel...

[Havoc]

More amateur hour in UK gov. Alarming given the upcoming Brexit stuff and associated logistical hurdles

[detaro]

bigger thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685911

[bruceboughton]

Anybody know what they’re using? Presumably something with a small default max file size (assuming each result is not megabytes of XML)? Kafka?

[donpott]

Apparently it was an Excel file, the solution being to split it into several smaller Excel files.

Kafka would be proud indeed.