MactoNon functional concerns, you are a legal system

time to read 2 min | 297 words

Macto is a system that operates in a highly legislative environment. As such, we have to be prepared for the court to ask us to show our records about a particular Inmate. Part of that is ensuring that we preserve the history of the Inmate’s Dossier. An example where this would be relevant is when a lawyer contend the legality of incarcerating the Inmate. You have to show not only that you have legal authority to incarcerate the guy, you also have to show that you had that authority continuously throughout the incarceration period.

A typical case where there is a problem is shown below:

  1. 27 June 2011 20:52 – Arrest by Sargent Azulay for car vandalizing.
  2. 29 June 2011 09:15 – Detention, 8 days by Judge Judy
  3. 5   July 2011 – Remanded in Custody by Judge Thachil Oti
  4. 14 Aug 2011 – Sentenced, 3 months by Judge Koev Li
  5. 27 Sep 2011 – Released at end of sentence

Do you see the problem? You probably don’t, but for me, it shouts. The issue is that an Arrest is only valid for 24 hours. Because of the gap in the incarceration warrants, a lawyer can usually get an Inmate out.

That means that part of what the system has to do is to be able to say not only what the current state, but what was the state at any given point in time. Those are usually called Temporal Systems, or Append Only systems, since you are not allowed to make modifications existing data, only create new data.

They also tend to be quite hard to work with, but this is still isn’t a post about the technical stuff, so we will let it go until we get to the good parts.

More posts in "Macto" series:

  1. (17 Aug 2011) Looking at warrants
  2. (15 Aug 2011) Talking to nasty people
  3. (11 Aug 2011) Counting is The Holy Grail
  4. (10 Aug 2011) Getting Started, you never forget your first Inmate
  5. (08 Aug 2011) The Main Screen
  6. (03 Aug 2011) Warrants are for fools
  7. (01 Aug 2011) Non functional concerns, you are a legal system
  8. (28 Jul 2011) And it goes on your permanent record, too!
  9. (27 Jul 2011) Once more from the top, I swear I had a few more over there
  10. (26 Jul 2011) Day to day life
  11. (22 Jul 2011) Where is the Inmate anyway?
  12. (19 Jul 2011) Let’s CREATE an Inmate
  13. (12 Jul 2011) Creating The Model
  14. (05 Jul 2011) The boundaries of a prison
  15. (25 Jul 2009) An end to end sample