Sometimes – regardless of how advanced our software, hardware and networks become – it’s the simplest of problems that give us the biggest headaches.
That was the case for a few of our customers recently. After taking the time to build, test and deploy their interfaces, they were faced with a situation they hadn’t prepared for: What to do when duplicate messages were sent to one of their channels?
This may not seem like a huge issue when a message is accidentally sent twice – but imagine what would happen if, like a broken record, that same message was sent 100, 1000 or even 1,000,000 times. That’s a lot of needless stress to place on your database when all you’d be doing is updating an identical record.
While the issue didn’t originate on our end, we do pride ourselves on helping our customers take control of their environments and manage communication with even the most difficult of partners. So, we jumped in, put together a sample tutorial showing how to ignore duplicate messages and documented the process in our manual. It’s a simple process of checking and comparing the messages that come in – and when using Iguana 4.0, it can even be easily added to any channel as a filter.
You can read about the process here: Ignoring Duplicate Messages
Alternatively, we also put together a tutorial showing how you can be notified when the duplicates are received: Detecting Duplicate Messages
Problems like this creep up all the time in the real world. Whether it’s a glitch, a bug, poor software or simply human error, it’s impossible to predict every scenario your interface is going to encounter. That’s why, whenever I’m looking into a new product or service, I want something than can be easily extended and altered. I also want to know that the company backing it will be there to lend a hand when that almost-inevitable crisis situation arises.
I’d like to think – and not just because their paying me to say this – that iNTERFACEWARE is one of those companies… 😉
–Art