{
  "id": 60708,
  "title": "The Blind Leading the Blind: Chasing a Production Bug",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/02/the-blind-leading-the-blind-chasing-a-production-bug",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-08-02T22:42:39.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/gkoos/the-blind-leading-the-blind-chasing-a-production-bug-i47"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "This is a recounting of the challenges faced by a PHP developer at Racing Post in London around 2016. The developer was part of a team working on a system that processed racing and greyhound data, using PHP 5 and Sybase for database communication. The application relied on a native Sybase extension written in C, which translated function calls, managed resources, and converted responses into PHP values.\n\nDespite efforts to debug the issue, production intermittently failed, returning empty query results with no apparent errors. The problem seemed random, as the same query could fail at different times. Restarting PHP provided temporary relief, but the underlying issue persisted. The developer and a C expert worked together to trace the lifecycle of a query from PHP into the Sybase extension, examining how connections were obtained, commands executed, and statuses interpreted. They discovered that the extension might be swallowing native errors, converting failures into empty result sets. By modifying the extension to surface native errors properly, the developer improved error handling and gained better visibility into the issue. However, the root cause remained, and the problem continued to occur. The developer emphasized the importance of distinguishing between valid empty results and failed queries, as the latter required reporting, retry logic, or intervention.",
  "summary": "This is a submission for DEV's Summer Bug Smash: Smash Stories powered by Sentry . Around 2016, I was working as a PHP developer at Racing Post in London. The Post is best known for horse-racing news, form and results, but behind the public-facing products sat a large collection of systems for processing all kinds of racing and greyhound data. The application I worked on used that data to produce…",
  "key_points": [
    "PHP developer at Racing Post in London faced intermittent production failures in 2016",
    "PHP 5 and Sybase used for database communication, native extension written in C",
    "Extension swallowed native errors, converting failures into empty result sets"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}