Lots of large database sites have long-running reports. I could imagine a site shutting down to freeze the database for a complicated report.
Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
31–40 of 77 posts
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#32It's not an altogether unreasonable approach to security. It doesn't sit particularly well with geeks, but for complex systems with a high risk of fraud there's a great deal of damage-limitation to be found in only processing transactions when they can be manually monitored. Heuristic intrusion detection is still relatively poor. For a government-to-business service, the overwhelming majority of legitimate transactio…
Being a German, I can hardly imagine security being the reason - I rather think it's bureaucracy and/or a complete misunderstanding of how computers work. Public services either close much earlier, or are 24/7.
Oh, I very much doubt that. If anything, I'd wager it's a purely technical/process decision. I bet there's some ancient mainframe deep behind that API that runs batch jobs and reports overnight.
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#33To be fair, this might not even have to do with germany, as it queries other countries' VAT registries online, many of which are down for maintainance many hours a day. The weird thing is that, even though there is a system for VAT id interconnectivity (VIES) , there is no central database of numbers. [ http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/ ]
Do you have any information why these databases are down for such a long time, every day? I can't see a really good technical reason for that right now.
A combination of incompetence, byzantine bureaucracy, under qualified personell, uncooperative subsystems and obscure security here in godforsaken greece
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#34reminds me of mbank.pl - a polish _internet only_ bank which accepts money transfer orders only from 0800 - 1800 hours and not on weekends. no, they don't save the order to execute it the next morning. they just print an error message and you have to enter your transfer order during opening hours.
wow, I didn't know they do that. In Czech republic this functionality works all the time, I wonder why they behave differently in these two countries.
oh no, it's only this one bank. online banking with other banks (haven't tried them all - 3 accounts is enough cough) works as expected.
it's only ironic because mbank is an internet only bank :)
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#35I've seen the same thing happen with 80% of the state sponsored services online in Mexico, and i think this isn't for security, its pure bureaucracy.
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#36Not only in Germany: http://twitpic.com/3jz6fh
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#37As the examples mentioned here show, opening hours are not altogether uncommon on the web. Here is another example from Germany: Certain TV shows are deemed not appropriate for kids of a certain age. This results in all broadcasters only being allowed to show them on TV at certain times. If a TV show is, for example, not appropriate for kids younger than twelve it can only be shown between 8pm and 6am. The consortium…
I've come across at least one government website in Australia that has 'opening hours' too.
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being a German, I can hardly imagine security being the reason - I rather think it's bureaucracy and/or a complete misunderstanding of how computers work. Public services either close much earlier, or are 24/7.
Oh, I very much doubt that. If anything, I'd wager it's a purely technical/process decision. I bet there's some ancient mainframe deep behind that API that runs batch jobs and reports overnight.
The online course registration system at my school was like this. Web frontend that recorded transactions and dumped them to the mainframe at night.
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#39Not really only in Germany. For instance Nordea Denmark closes its online bank between 2 am and 5 am. Probably because they don't have staff at those times to prevent scammers from transferring money out and people rarely need to use banking during those hours. As someone who sleeps weirdly it has annoyed me once or twice, though.
They need to reboot the servers and it takes two hours to get them back up again.
Standard Nordea cron job.
Re: Only in Germany: An API with opening hours
#40My friend thought it would be novel to give his personal portfolio site opening hours (with a nice "sorry we're closed!" notification). It was very cool, except GoogleBot only came crawling in the middle of the night.
He could always check for the UserAgent :)
Google doesn't like that I heard.