In today's fast-paced world of cell phones, Sega Nomads, and turn signals, we don't have time for anything. That's why we have acronyms. Just try to read until the end of this: International Business Machines Corporation. Congratulations if you're still awake – the rest of us non-MENSA types will keep referring to it as IBM.

At Chris N.'s employer, they needed the ability to look up acronyms' meanings, so one of Chris's predecessors got cracking on a solution. Not one to buy into that whole normalization thing, he created a table like the following:

ROWID ABBR_CDE ABBR_TXT 867 IBM INTERNATIONAL 868 IBM BUSINESS 869 IBM MACHINES 870 IBM CORPORATION

But then he came up against a wall. What about acronyms that can mean several things? Take "LA." Is it Los Angeles, Louisiana, or Louis Armstrong? Not to fear, the addition of an ABBR_IDX column made things all better.

ROWID ABBR_CDE ABBR_TXT ABBR_IDX 1121 LA LOS 1 1122 LA ANGELES 1 1123 LA XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 2 1124 LA LOUISIANA 3

You might be asking yourself "does LA really represent thirty Xs in their system?" The answer is short answer is "no;" the long answer is "no, and I can't believe you counted all of the Xs." For whatever reason, that sequence was chosen as a delimiter.

protected final String ACRONYM_PHRASE_DELIMITER = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";

Of course, that's the only reference to ACRONYM_PHRASE_DELIMITER in the entire codebase. Instead, the convenience of the following method is used:

private static boolean isNotAllXs( String s ) { StringBuffer test = new StringBuffer( s.trim() ); boolean retVal = false; for ( int i = 0; i < test.length(); i++ ) { if ( test.charAt( i ) != 'X' ) { retVal = true; } } return retVal; }

Now that the system could handle multiple defnitions per acronym, Chris's predecessor (or maybe someone else) went back through and updated a bunch of the old acronyms. For instance, "IBM" could now mean:

ROWID ABBR_CDE ABBR_TXT ABBR_IDX 1181 IBM INTERNATIONAL 3 1182 IBM MACHINES 3 1183 IBM BUSINESS 3

Yes, that's how it was entered. And here's another example:

ROWID ABBR_CDE ABBR_TXT ABBR_IDX 7712 WCAB WORK 1 7713 WCAB COMPENSATION 1 7714 WCAB APPEAL 1 7715 WCAB BOARD 1 7716 WCAB XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 2 7717 WCAB WORK 3 7718 WCAB COMPENSATION 3 7719 WCAB APPEALS 3 7720 WCAB BOARD 3 7721 WCAB XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 4 7722 WCAB WORKERS' 5 7723 WCAB COMPENSATION 5 7724 WCAB APPEAL 5 7725 WCAB BOARD 5 7726 WCAB XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 6 7727 WCAB WORKERS' 7 7728 WCAB COMPENSATION 7 7729 WCAB APPEALS 7 7730 WCAB BOARD 7 7731 WCAB XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 8 7732 WCAB WORKMEN'S 9 7733 WCAB COMPENSATION 9 7734 WCAB APPEAL 9 7735 WCAB BOARD 9 7736 WCAB XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 10 7737 WCAB WORKMEN'S 11 7738 WCAB COMPENSATION 11 7739 WCAB APPEALS 11 7740 WCAB BOARD 11

Chris wrote a handy data access object that communicates with the table and made a friendly hashmap for people to use., so things are at least a little better than they used to be (as this system has been in use for years now).

Still, just one acronym comes to mind, but in the spirit of solidarity, here it is in table form:

ROWID ABBR_CDE ABBR_TXT ABBR_IDX 8411 WTF WHAT 1 8412 WTF THE 1 8414 WTF XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 2