JCL Exclusions

Evan Macaulay

Hi All,

 

I have a project with 822 open tickets.

This can be displayed with the JCL  - 
Project = x and status != Done

i have a number of tickets set up with a unique component
The JCL query returns 38 for the number of tickets with the component in JCL
project = x AND component = Y and status != Done

But if i try 
project = x AND component != Y and status != Done
I do not get  822 - 38 expected result of the query
instead I get a result of 415 ?

I am at a loss to figure out why.
Any thoughts please.

 

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

Forgive me for paraphrasing, but I struggled to read this a bit:  (And I assume you mean JQL...).  You are seeing:

• 822 found by "Project = x and status != Done"
• 38 found by "Project = x and status != Done and component = Y"
• 415 found by "Project = x and status != Done and component != Y"

Which is, if I'm thinking of this rightly, the correct answer, but totally counter-intuitive for us humans.

We tend to be bad at thinking in negatives and think "is not" includes all things that doo not have a particular characteristic, we don't automatically understand that the logical not comparison does not (and should not) assume that comparing null with not something is not the same as comparing something that is there with a particular value.

Another way to put that is I think you you are expecting "component is not Y" to match "there is no component to compare it with".  Jira can't answer "is component not Y" when there is no value to compare.

So, TLDR, try:

"Project = x and status != Done and component is empty"