Re: What's that line again about 'best practices'?

Thank you very much!

On Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 5:08 PM Clay Jackson (cjackson) < Clay.Jackson_at_quest.com> wrote:

> Wise words from MWF.
>
>
>
> The problem I have with “best practices” is that they are typically only
> “best” within some rather narrow set of constraints, which often includes
> time.
>
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> Many moons ago, before such things as Index Organized Tables, and in fact
> using a database other than Oracle, a shop I was in had “best practices”
> that “all tables must be indexed” and “wherever possible, all access to
> tables must be via an index”. Some wunderkind took that so far as to write
> “access wrappers” for all tables and mandated that “all access must use the
> wrappers”. We had a really small lookup table (under 100 rows), something
> around work centers, as I recall, that was the most frequently accessed
> table in the shop. Needless to say, performance problems around that
> table were rampant. I was a “hero” for 10 minutes when I replaced a
> process that called the access routine several thousand times with a
> “direct read” of the table. When wunderkind found out, I was the goat. I
> was a GS-3, he was a GS-13, and performance was sacrificed on the altar of
> conformance.
>
>
>
> There’s a term in medicine that I think might be appropriate:
>
> “Standard of care”
>
> Or the corresponding Tort law term
>
> “Duty of care”
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> Of course, there’s the age old “excuse”, “It seemed like a good idea at
> the time”
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>
>
> And ANY “standard”, or “best practice” or “usual practice” or WHATEVER you
> want to name it, needs some sort of documented EXCEPTION process, the rigor
> of which is commensurate with the possible harm that could be caused by not
> complying with said standard.
>
>
>
> Clay
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> *From:* oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> *On
> Behalf Of *Mark W. Farnham
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 27, 2022 2:22 PM
> *To:* christopherdtaylor1994_at_gmail.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> *Subject:* RE: What's that line again about 'best practices'?
>
>
>
> *CAUTION:* This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not
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>
>
>
> James Morle suggested something along the lines that they should be
> renamed Usual Practices (or something like that). I’ve called them Standard
> Minimum Starting Points and I pointed out that the only best practice I
> know of is to not allow things to be called best practices. Calling
> something a “best practice” tends to stifle attempts to do better.
>
>
>
> IF you can get something called a best practice into your service delivery
> standards and you implement that practice, you have a legal defense whether
> or not the users can do anything or not.
>
>
>
> Nothing can be proven to be a best practice. Things called best practice
> are sometimes really just good enough to be acceptable.
>
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>
> You’ve probably caught the drift I believe “best practice” is a harmful
> term. Some things called “best practices” are really quite good initial
> starting points or usual practices that are just fine unless you need
> something better.
>
>
>
> *From:* oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [
> mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org>] *On
> Behalf Of *Chris Taylor
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 27, 2022 1:59 PM
> *To:* oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> *Subject:* OT: What's that line again about 'best practices'?
>
>
>
> Mark or someone has an idiom I want to save this time....
>
> Something about best practices being written by people who don't have to
> support them or something .....
>
>
>
> Chris
>
>
>

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