Garbled Data

Our test team was trying to recreate some problems detected by our customers. They were having a hard time. So they took a look around at the data in the different tables in this part of the subsystem. They found the main table that drives the processing. Unfortunately, most of the data seemed to be all garbled up.

They were using SQL Developer. One of the testers wondered if this could be a problem with the query tool. That was doubtful. But hey. It could not hurt to try viewing the data with another tool. So another tester pulled out TOAD and tried to bring up the data. Most of the data seemed empty.

The testers figured that SQL Developer was just displaying all the data, regardless of how strange it was. TOAD on the other hand, was just supressing the display of weird looking data. This did not help us understand why the data was bad. It just was an interesting observation.

The data in the main table was SQL*Loaded from a file the testers were creating. Further inspection of this file showed that the positioning was incorrect. Perhaps that was the source of the weird looking data. Further research is required.