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Re: [PLUG] City Lawyer: We Don't Store Data on Hard Disk
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You got stomped.
Nastily.
You presented a bunch of geeks who made assumptions.
It did not matter if the assumptions were true, because
they cannot be tested.
My ASSUMPTION of how this law is interpreted is that the
city must provide you with the records in the same way
they are "kept", if this is possible for a "average" city
employee to copy them and give them to you.
Ignoring the tech aspect for now, I'm going to hit on the
"fact" (dunno if it is), of what the lawyer said:
The Right to Know Act does not requre the government agency
to create a document that does not exist--no matter how
simple that task may be.
Done. You are dead without more information.
To focus on the "not on disk" is a worthless exercise. A
distraction. Even if the data is on disk, who cares? So
the lawyer made a minor technical mistake. That does NOT
get you your desired data, merely an smarmy apology as they
display the next barrier.
Let's say the app that gathers with data really queries several
systems, including a SQL based system and a MF based lookup system.
And that system agregates the data as you now see it on the web.
What makes you think:
1) Anyone in that office has a CLUE of how it works?
2) You have the right to cause them to go through any
effort beyond what they already have done?
They already present the information. On the web.
You really want it? Spider it. Not a big deal.
This is a pissing match you cannot win unless you are ready to
fund an army of lawyers and technologists.
Based on the "few minutes" quoted you lost any hope of credibility.
Have you ever tried to insert your personal code in a hardcoded
mainframe middleware transaction? It is not pretty. Just because
it ends up on the web site does NOT mean it is SQL accessable.
How many of your "experts" ever wrote COBOL code to access VSAM
files using a MF 3270 session in an old MVS environment.
None.
Not a one.
If they had, there is NO WAY any of them would have said less than
2 days for this type of project, and possibly up to several weeks.
So why would their opinion carry any weight?
And yah know something?
It MIGHT be tape along with a pure memory cache holding it.
Unlikely, but possible.
Or, it is a matter of terminology. Mainframes don't have disks,
mainframes have DASD. As the master said, "It depends on what you
mean by 'it'"
Do you have areal implementation spec of that web site? And are you sure
it was followed?
Do you REALLY know the data is SQL accessible, or are you guessing?
Even if it was, would that come under the caveat of not creating something
that does not exists, no matter how easy?
Are you willing to fund the city employees to spec out the program,
design, write, test, qc, test some more? I doubt you could even figure out
how to login and use the editor, let alone write, compile, and run a
program in under a couple of weeks. Should they allow you educational
access to their critical systems?
Are you willing to pay the CPU charges for the system access?
Even if you were, would it be legal to take your money and provide
this service to you, as opposed to everyone else?
Do you REALLY think they would give you access to their MF to write
a program to extract it, ever?
These guys can stonewall you for years.
To those of you suggesting questions like:
> Q: Okay, so the data resides on the mainframe. Are
> you saying that
> the requested fields reside in random access memory
> on the mainframe,
> and if so what happens to this information if the
> mainframe should
> "go down" or is turned off?
>
WHO CARES?!?!?!?!
It does not matter. It'll just piss the judge off. It does count
againt the central question and the law that the city must follow.
This is NOT a technical discussion, it is a legal and procedural one.
Spider the damn web site.
One more thing: 1/2 a million records is TINY.
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