Re: relational reasoning -- why two tables and not one?

Clifford Heath wrote:
...
> That hasn't happened anywhere near me. SAP is very widely used, for
> example,
> and more and more organisations have given up on bespoke development
> altogether.
> SAP's configuration cost is very high, and there's a bad reason why
> organisations
> pay that cost. No manager will sign a 7-figure check without a consultant's
> report saying they made the right decision. Guess who gets to do the work
> of configuring these behemoths? The very same consultants, of course.
> ...

I think the main reason is that the typical manager is not competent to organize rolling his own. He knows that too but is usually not confident enough to admit it. The fact is, this field is still having its learning pangs but it`s growing so fast that big mistakes are being made that may take generations to undo. At the db technical level, the phenomenon is almost the same, rolling your own, given a small enough scale. gives similar security. The phenomenon in both cases amounts to the acquired practice of secrecy. Outside of work, the same individuals will trumpet open information and some imaginary democracy as long as it doesn`t affect their personal wallet, except for token donations to the real fanatics. Eg., they will espouse public education but send their own kids to private school, espouse public transport infrastructure but pay tolls for their own convenience, same goes for health care. In other words, pretend they live to preserve one society but prefer to live in one of two. This depends on secrecy, a concept that started as a basic personal right until various human organizations started to lever it on a large scale, certainly organized religion did that five hundred years ago and probably there are equal earlier examples. About twenty years ago, computer communication started to make the manipulation much easier. Secrecy is one of the basic human motives that no government as far as I know has yet dared to make a nominal department for, yet all the others are more less covered, eg., public and personal health. Admittedly they do have secrecy departments, but they are usually called the `intelligence agency`. Often they will anoint a `privacy commissioner` but that is usually a PR position. Where I live, some large chain stores require me to provide a driver`s licence in order to return an unopened package even though I have the original cash receipt from yesterday. Why is this important to a computer newsgroupÉ Answer: it`s all computerized! Received on Fri Oct 16 2009 - 04:43:07 CEST