I was tired. So at first I tried to run the 10 jobs that generate the data responsible for the problem. The first job took almost 3 hours before it died due to an out of memory error. I got the second job to run. The third job never finished and the database shut down for maintenance at night.
Ouch. A new deadline was created. Again I told my boss we would not be making the new deadline. Then I got offers for help from another team. I declined. They would only come, ask question, and literally waste time. Finally time to start working smart.
Instead of running these massive jobs, I decided to inspect the code. I figured I should just study each function until I was 90% sure it wasn't a problem. Then I would skip onto the next one. I got to the 9th of 10 function. This one had some trouble. This was it.
This was the sort of the problem where the research is the majority of the work. I coded up a solution, tested it, and passed it on. It is still going to be a tight schedule with the configuration management and test people. But I got it done.
