[LeBleu]

I'm amused that you think it is possible to rewrite the whole thing without entering super brain mode. In my experience, generally the only way to reproduce such legacy reports is by reverse engineering how they currently work. (which will require super brain mode based on the above described current complexity) One would think someone in the business would know what the report is supposed to do, but I frequently encounter cases where no one does, they just want the report to work the way the old one did, whatever the heck that was.

I know of no solution not involving time travel to solve that for legacy reports and systems. Obviously going forward one can worry about documentation, etc. but with legacy stuff it is already too late to implement those rules.

[epochwolf]

Which describes what I was dealing with perfectly. Unfortunately the guy before me was a rather brilliant python programmer writing rails code on an extremely short deadline. I at least had the luxury of having a short in person meeting with the person using the report which allowed me to clean up some misfeatures that had been implemented due to miscommunication over the phone. (Person using the report was out of state)