Middleware / testing
I've have seen (in passing) a particular vendor's name mentioned here - the one who supposedly provided middleware for the TSB project. I have no way of knowing whether or not this information is correct. However, I do know that ten or so years ago I worked on a project with said vendor, in which they turned over supposedly "near production ready" code, with just a need for final testing and approval. But no sooner had I begun my own tests with that code than it fell over hard, and further investigation showed that the vendor had almost completely fabricated the results of their own internal testing of the code! When confronted on the matter the vendor then claimed that the software was actually nowhere near production ready, and that it in fact it was just a throwaway, proof-of-concept. (This is not what our agreement with them stated that they would provide.) Which even if true means that it also failed miserably as a P.O.C.!
After much work on my part I finally got the code working pretty much as intended. However, by this time management had lost faith in the software and was also rapidly losing faith in the vendor, so they didn't let even the newly-working code anywhere near production. This was probably a wise move on their part.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
