Re: Where can I find real-life-examples about ORACLE

(continuing with 100% wild *ss speculation)

Tim,

I thought this might be of interest to the person that asked the original question, so am replying via the list.

My "take" is that human nature does *not* automatically support an organizational culture that values esoteric theories and/or disciplined methodologies (unless you are in Germany?), or bring about the willingness to expend resources to implement good models.

In other words, individual conciousness is expressed *via institutional structures/practices* within a collective.

So, the "organizational culture" within an IT department/ infrastructure is presumably dependent on some set of objectives that are expressed (or are absent, as the case may be) in the larger organization's business model & "culture". An organization's value (appreciation) of methods/discipline doesn't appear from thin air, although its appearance might be more probable in certain cultural contexts than others.

eg, some d*ckhead damager says "get Remedy". The grumbling dba, deciding s/he dosn't want to get fired, does it. Despite the arguments of normalization zealots, Remedy "works" (however painfully to the IT staff).

At that point, the people that make "business decisions" (or those that create th "climate" in which business decision take place) are aware that the position of the normalization zealots is dependent on far more nuance than was initially presented by the zealots. Next time someone asks why some IT project costs so much, the damager might consider the extra resources needed to do things the way that the zealots want, to be expendible.

As you may know, Peoplesoft started marketing a University software package about 2 or 3 years ago. It was initially sold as "vaporware". The first iterations were reported to be big time sucky. A consortium of colleges in the midwest sued Peoplesoft over the crappy implementations and lack of response to very serious production problems. The failures and giant costs were front page news in the "prestigious" national journal _Chonicle of Higher Education_. However, upon hearing from high levels at Peoplesoft that the bugs would be solved in the "next version", California decided to continue on the $350,000,000 project to convert to Peoplesoft on 25 University campuses.

The world if full of evil & the taxpayers are restless. :)

regards,
ep

On 23 Apr 2001, at 14:27, Tim Sawmiller wrote:

Date sent:              Mon, 23 Apr 2001 14:27:50 -0400
To:                     <PierceED_at_csus.edu>

...

>
> As far as people making business decisions, why do they need to
> know about denormalization? That's an implementation issue. If
> they hired good IT people, then they're ok. If they didn't,
> they're scr*wed. Such is life in the big city. We need to get
> some successes under our belt so we can preach with confidence
> and having refenceable clients available.

...

> >>> "Eric D. Pierce" <PierceED_at_csus.edu> 04/23/01 02:06PM >>>
> And I'd be curious to know why you are curious!
>
> What I have gathered so far from the discussion is that normalization
> zealotry, probably similar to other purist perspectives in life,
> doesn't get any particularly huge respect in the "real world".
>
> In other words, people that make business decisions have never heard
> of any "conventional wisdom" that violating normalized db designs will
> automatically wreck their organization. Like many other things, their
> IT infrastructure will inefficiently plod along, and suffer the burden
> of crappy models (grumbling dbas and all....) in spite of a lack of
> conformance to theoretical orthodoxy.
>
> I would guess that in some cases, an organization's IT folks might be
> able to present a coherent business case for zealous normalization,
> but doing so is probably a rare skill, and perhaps even more rarely
> appreciated by the organization.
>
> Unfortunately the situation for "structured denormalization" is
> probably about the same, except that it may not have quite the
> "political" baggage, and so can just be used as a technical method.

...

-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: Eric D. Pierce
  INET: PierceED_at_csus.edu

Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may
also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).