Re: Database Design

From: Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 14:03:27 -0800
Message-ID: <1073426524.284188@yasure>

Galen Boyer wrote:

> On Tue, 06 Jan 2004, john.g_at_dot.spamfree.com wrote:
>
>

>>Sorry, but, while not on a par with medicine ( or law or
>>nursing, or many others) , any profession responsible ,in many
>>cases, for keeping multi-million dollar organizations up and
>>running ( think about the Airlines, Banks, Stock Exchange,UPS,
>>etc.)  need not be shy about being proud of its skills.  [I
>>know of one company that would lose 25K for each minute the
>>database was down] Their does need to be some way, however, to
>>insure that those that profess to be DBAs ( or Application
>>Developers, Web Designers, whatever) have the skill set needed
>>for the task at hand. How to do this makes for a lively debate.

>
>
> I never said, nor do I think that we shouldn't be extremely proud
> and also strive to be very good at what we do. I just
> fundamentally disagree with those in this newsgroup that think
> what we do is do damn important, so important that they liken it
> to medicine.

Your disagreement is noted: We just respectfully disagree.

I have personally worked on systems that Boeing, at an international bank, for government agencies, at pharmaceutical firms, and hospitals. Systems that could, if they make a mistake, cost someone their livelihood or their life in exactly the same way as could a malpracticing physician, attorney, or engineer.

In fact these systems might be able to do more damage. A physician can, at most, hurt a handful of patients before being caught. A mistake in a prescription monitoring system can injure or kill many hundreds, even thousands before the error is detected.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)

Received on Tue Jan 06 2004 - 16:03:27 CST