Chapter 9: <Close the Gates to Hell>

Field supervisors.

Nuri Finances outsourced software development to Daesan System. Field supervisors were people from Nuri Finances familiar with this program and managed communications with Daesan system.

Woosung’s field supervisor was Assistant manager Kwak Jungwook who specialized in HTS.

Five staffs including Kwak Jungwook stared at the computer screen.

–Build started: Project: NuriHTS, Configuration:Debug

Win32—

Compiling…

Linking…

Embedding manifest…

Unit Tests Start.

BuyLimitOrderStockTradingTest à OK!

BuyMarketOrderStockTradingTest à OK!

SellLimitOrderStockTradingTest à OK!

SellMarketOrderStockTradingTest à OK!

…

…

StochasticDayChartTest à OK!

StochasticMonthChartTest à OK!

StochasticYearChartTest à OK!

…

…

100% PASSED

–Complete—

Looking at the word “Complete,” Woosung told Kwak Jungwook.

“Test has completed 100%. This means that there is nothing wrong on the HTS side.”

Kwak Jungwook asked Yoon Gihwan.

“What do you think, general manager? Can we trust this?”

Yoon Gihwan looked at Woosung.

“I think I should check it myself. Hey newbie, show me the codes.”

Woosung stood up calmly and replied.

“Have a seat and take your time.”

Yoon Gihwan sat down and checked through the codes hurriedly.

20 minutes later.

Kwak Jungwook asked again impatiently.

“General manager? The account balance is incorrect. If the problem is from the HTS side…. This is going to be serious.”

Yoon Gihwan didn’t even blink once. He kept staring at the monitor.

“Daesan System may have to pay the penalty and lose this project.”

Kwak Jungwook continued to emphasize the gravity of this situation, but Yoon Gihwan knew this already. A problem with the account system meant that this could be the end of Nuri Finances.

After 5 more minutes on the computer, Yoon Gihwan opened his mouth.

“I don’t think you need to worry.”

“Are you saying that there is nothing wrong with HTS?”

Yoon Gihwan nodded. Kwak Jungwook sighed deeply.

“Phew… Well I guess we can relax if the problem is not from our end.”

“But how did this happen? How could there be a mistake in account balance?”

“We don’t know yet. Several customers contacted us complaining about the wrong balances. When we checked, we found out that all the other customers’ balances were also incorrect. We don’t know the exact cause yet.”

Yoon Gihwan frowned. If the problem doesn’t get fixed soon, customers won’t be able to use the HTS tomorrow for stock trading.

“If this persists, it’s going to get bloody…”

The headquarter would start an investigation to find whoever was responsible for this error. The accountable developers would lose their jobs and possibly be reprimanded further. If the existing customers lost money by not being able to trade, the situation would become impossible to fix.

The company may have to reimburse the customers’ losses. This worried Yoon Gihwan a lot. Kwak Jungwook couldn’t hide his worries either.

“If the customers sue…”

Kwak Jungwook couldn’t even finish the sentence. He swallowed hard.

Park Junwoo and Kim Yonggun stood rigidly. The other developers in the office looked as perplexed as them. A palpable tension filled the room. Then, Woosung spoke.

“Oh, I thought something looked strange.”

Everyone turned their heads towards him at the same time.

“What is?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What?”

“You need to explain right now.”

Everyone including Yoon Gihwan, Park Junwoo, Kim Yonggun, and Kwak Jungwook, all asked at the same time.

“I didn’t have the clearance to access the DB (DataBase) so I couldn’t connect to it, but I noticed something wrong with the stored procedure in the test DB.”

Yoon Gihwan prompted Woosung impatiently.

“Stop stalling and just spit it out.”

Woosung looked at Kwak Jungwook mysteriously.

“If we can fix this problem, does this mean that Nuri Finances will feel favorable towards Daesan System?”

Kwak Jungwook replied quickly.

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t be surprised if the headquarter will give you the account system contract.”

Another company outsourced the account system at the moment. The main partnering corporation, Daeyang System, hired the company called ST for the account system and Daesan for the channel system. Nuri Finances was in partnership with Daeyang as a secondary company.

“Hmm… all right. I will tell you as soon as I check this out.”

Woosung started Toad, which was a program to access the DB. He then connected to the Oracle database and searched the Oracle. which was a table of the scheduling program list provided by DBMS.

“If you look here, at around 3:05 pm a batch program was executed, which is the market closing time.”

– OP_BATCH_CUSTOMER_TRADING_BREAK_DOWN

This was the name of the Batch program. He pointed at the 256th line.

“Do you see the line that says Try Catch?”

Everyone nodded.

“This checks customers’ daily transactions and end-of-the-day balances. It compares the numbers and confirms that everything adds up correctly.”

Yoon Gihwan asked abruptly.

“Well, of course, it should do that. Data coherency is very important.”

“I agree. But what if it is not working correctly?”

Kwak Jungwook’s eyes widened.

“… wh… what?”

“When the errors from the server don’t get processed, how do you think this procedure react to the inconsistency?” Woosung said the problem came from the server side. Yoon Gihwan stood up angrily.

“Hey! How can you say that? Did you even look at the server codes?”

Kwak Jungwook also asked impatiently.

“W… wait. Errors on the server side? Are you saying that there is a problem with the stock trading transaction?”

Woosung didn’t answer the questions and continued to explain.

“To the Catch line, it just processes it as Exception and moves on.”

Everyone was now infuriated. They stopped listening to Woosung.

Kwak Jungwook asked again irritably.

“Again, are you saying that the problems are occurring from the server side? Are you sure? Just tell me.”

Yoon Gihwan shrieked.

“You! Newbie!”

“I took a quick look at the server codes on the SVN to help with developing HTS…. How much would you pay for this kind of consultation?”

“What?”

“Well, I’m not saying I need to be paid, but I am responsible for only the HTS. If I work on the server, then that’s outside of my contract. On top of that, this is a huge case… Wouldn’t you prefer to pay and get it fixed ASAP? If you don’t believe my explanation, check the relevant procedure.”

Finishing his explanation, Woosung left the room.

’10 years ago, they had to hire several famous developers to fix this problem. They spent at least 100,000 dollars. I remember Manager Park being envious of those developers making the big bucks.’

All these things were in Woosung’s memories. These were all the things he could use to make money.