[ericbrow]

I inherited a large database that "supported" an application, when in fact the application layer was built into the database. I took over from a begrudging dev who was involuntarily transferred from dev/dba to just dev. In reviewing the hundreds of ETL jobs, I found one that started off as SQL that invoked visual basic script in an external file share, which at some point invoked a small obfuscated machine code script located on yet a different external file share. Googling didn't tell me what the machine code actually did. The disgruntled dev said that if I wasn't smart enough to figure it out then I should quit. He had put this mess together with the idea that it would be job security. Finally, his boss forced him to admit that the machine code stripped a text field of spaces. The job was re-written in straight SQL and ran much faster.