Re: tracking shipments, inventory

"-CELKO-" <jcelko212_at_earthlink.net> wrote in message news:1104097516.016096.282300_at_c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >> IMO - IT is nowhere near a profession yet - more a trade or at best
> a guild! <<
>
> A Guild was a group which would make good any actions of its members:
> Guild member "X" fails to deliver the
> silverware/goldware/upholstery/ironwork/whatever promised, the Guild
> finishes his contract and puts the Guild's hallmark on the pieces.
>
> But I see your point...
>
> The stat I use to scare people is that it takes SIX YEARS ON THE JOB to
> become a Union Journeyman Carpenter in New York State, but only SIX
> WEEKS in a MS certification cram course to be a "database/C#/VB guru"
> by comparison. That was Journeyman, not Master.
>
> Who can kill you, or bankrupt your company faster? A carpenter or a
> DBA?
>
> I am really pissy on these newsgroup. Because my name has been out
> there for about 20 years, I get the disasters. Because my wife worked
> on a "cancer ward" for 13 years, non-profits know I consult for free
> (but not for long). This year, some newbie violated 1NF in a design of
> a database that sends medical supplies to Africa. The wrong quantities
> were packed. You do not run down to the corner drug store to fill a
> prescription in a war zone. People die due to a lack of fundamental
> database design errors.
>
> Because I am an atheist, I do not believe in Big-E "Evil" -- devils,
> supernatural monsters and that kind of thing. But I am an
> engineer/geek and I do believe in Big-S "stupidity" -- newbies who will
> not hear any criticism of their work, self-taught programmers who read
> a book entitled "Learn SQL in 10 Days" and now know everything on the
> 11-th day.
>
> Talk to me when you have a decade of work, education and experience
> behind you, kid.
>
> What scares me is that even the IT college courses are weaker than when
> I went to school in the Stone Age. No undergrad database courses, very
> little math, no business courses, etc.
>

For one, the College of Information Science and Technology (CIST) at Drexel University (in Philadelphia) offers the same database courses to undergraduates that it offers to graduates, and they are not easy. The first two terms are required. Grad students have the option of taking parts 3 and 4, which gets into data warehousing and advanced topics. Parts 1 and 2 are relational theory (from the ground up, so you deal with FDs, etc., through 5NF, index types, and then SQL) Part 2 starts to get into how an RDBMS functions, using Oracle as an example. There is no math, except for a couple of statistics courses. There is, alas, no business course requirement. I feel very strongly that business should be a key component. Note that Drexl offers three different computer science programs:

College of Engineering: for those who want to build computers and write compilers. The true techno-geeks. Very difficult. CIST: for those who wish to be "software engineers" or other typoes of "prectitioners". Half a geek. Moderately difficult. College of Business: for those who need to use what the practitioners make. Calls the others geeks. Even the bosses "get" it. Received on Mon Dec 27 2004 - 03:44:13 CET