>>>>>Speaking of anti-patterns. //TODO: is one of them.
>>>>
>>>>Oh bugger :-{
>>>>
>>>>But that, surely, is a bit of a blanket statement?
>>>
>>>This a the thread for blanket statements
>>True.
>>
>>>You should do This, doing That is wrong . Here's my rule . Be clear, be consistent.
>>But sometimes to be clear you shouldn't be consistent :-}
>>
>>>Sometimes I break them.
>>Surely not....
>
>Funny though about coding standards. Where I'm working at the moment are using a 3rd party for their website. I was looking though their code during the week very nice and clear. A good standard.
>
>They still managed to drop an untested change into the live environment that meant people signing up to something and setting up their bank payment where just not recorded anywhere at all.
>
>I only noticed after two days because a certain sort of payment frequency dropped off and then stopped and we had a "did anything happen on that day at that time" session with them.

That's a coincidence. I have a client who is moving to a completely new accountancy package this weekend and who also has a third party handling the main web site. The bulk of their internal systems will be off-line for at least 24hrs so they asked to website guys to put up a prominent notice to that effect - which they have done but it only shows after the user has logged in. Problem is that since authentication depends on an internal server they couldn't get to that page :-}
Probably not as potentially damaging as your scenario but doesn't make for a good customer experience....

FWIW I was guilty of a similar gaff in that I failed to notify one of their EDI partners that their connection would also be down :-{

Looks like I'm going to spend most of this week-end checking that half a dozen dependent applications are working properly as we bring them back on line :-{