TSB planned outage

msallen

charlieboycat wrote: »

Could one of the posters who "work in IT" explain in layman's terms what the error message "ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException exception: null" means? I thought it might be something to do with my browser but I get the same error in both Firefox and IE.

What it means and what it tells us is not very much.

What it means is that an attempt was made to access one of a list of values, but the wrong "position in the list" was looked for (such as looking for the 6th item in a list of 3).

What it tells us is that at least part of the platform is written in Java, and that is where this particular issue is manifesting itself. However the issue may have been caused by a totally different part of the system (e.g. the part where it was decided to look in 6th place in the list).

Mnd

Why do some people ask for compensation. I thought TSB had already promised they would cover any losses

bazwaldo

Mnd wrote: »

Why do some people ask for compensation. I thought TSB had already promised they would cover any losses

I guess TSB wont simply cover everybody's losses without people claiming first.

lazer-zxr

Mnd wrote: »

Why do some people ask for compensation. I thought TSB had already promised they would cover any losses

Because financial losses aren't the only ones being suffered. Inconvenience, stress, time. And on a more fundemental level, the rights of people to access information about, and manage their money.

I can't understand why people are defending TSB .... or are they a TSB proxy?

ColdIron

charlieboycat wrote: »

Could one of the posters who "work in IT" explain in layman's terms what the error message "ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException exception: null" means? I thought it might be something to do with my browser but I get the same error in both Firefox and IE.

An array is a multi-element structure of data types, let's say for argument numbers. The code might refer to the fourth element (index) of the array when there are only three. This will raise (throw) an exception as the the process can't continue and it bails out without terminating properly. Java development environments are very good at spotting potential problems when the code is being written but cannot tell how many elements may exist or which one might be indexed when the code is actually executing. In my experience array index issues are often, but not always, logic errors on the part of the developer. On the plus side out of bound errors actually pack up which is better than using an legal but incorrect index which carry on but produce the wrong result

PROLIANT

ColdIron wrote: »

An array is a multi-element structure of data types, let's say for argument numbers. The code might refer to the fourth element (index) of the array when there are only three. This will raise (throw) an exception as the the process can't continue and it bails out without terminating properly. Java development environments are very good at spotting potential problems when the code is being written but cannot tell how many elements may exist or which one might be indexed when the code is actually executing. In my experience array index issues are often, but not always, logic errors on the part of the developer. On the plus side out of bound errors actually pack up which is better than using an legal but incorrect index which carry on but produce the wrong result

Very good explanation.
I spend most of my days head buried in C# and PL/SQL, it is too easy to make a mistake like this.

On a positive note the Array exception seems to have been fixed and the whole online interface is running smoothly again. :beer:

Skippy13

It's so annoying. I can see my money but can't access it! I never use the card so can't remember the PIN and I don't have a local branch (despite what TSB think, Slough is half an hour away so I don't consider that to be local!).

I think I'll stick to banks with local branches from now on.

ColdIron

PROLIANT wrote: »

I spend most of my days head buried in C# and PL/SQL, it is too easy to make a mistake like this.

Difficult to defend against as well, short of frog marching the offender out of the building and shooting him in the head

PROLIANT

ColdIron wrote: »

Difficult to defend against as well, short of frog marching the offender out of the building and shooting him in the head

I am sure test driven development would have caught it, but then again the dev team will be panic fixing in the live environment trying to get systems back on-line, probably some contract project manager and stuffed shirt shouting at the developers and constantly asking them "hows it going" "when will it be ready", personally I would just tell them to fak off.

Turn the phones off, brew the coffee and put he headphones in - far more productive and effective.

oldfella

But that is just claiming there is a wait to log on because of restricted access whereas I logged in and then got a blank screen.
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I got this, you need to wait a good 30secs or so for the screen to populate