Re: Database Design

On Sun, 04 Jan 2004, damorgan_at_x.washington.edu wrote:

> We are the only "profession" in which practitioners expect to
> be able to work without credential.

Bankers, Stock Analysts, CEOs, Managers, line-workers, Restauranteurs, Salesmen, ...

There are plenty of professions where one works on resume credentials and not some industry standard.

And, google is littered with you bashing the OCP, but I can't find any reference to your trying to devise better means of standardized qualifications. You end each bash session with, "Experience wins over OCP". I, to, agree with your OCP assessments, but I don't see how your google history shows you standing behind what you are touting here.

> No one is practicing medicine, law, accounting, engineering,
> dentistry, pharmacy, etc. with so little evidence of
> skill.

Accounting and law have an entry level qualification but the people get work based on resume and peer approval. Engineers seemingly are required to have a college degree, but they don't even have to have them in a related field, and there are engineers who don't even need a college degree.

The issue of standardized qualifications only really makes sense when we are dealing with lives.

> Consider that anyone of us could walk into a pharmacy, count
> pills, and put a label on the bottle. Yet no government in
> North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, or any other
> first world country, would let us do so without a pharmacy
> degree and passing a government sponsored exam.

What you site has to do with somebody's life. "In the whole scheme of things", seems you are putting too much damned importance on what it is we do. Do you really believe the government should be involved in qualifying some DBA's ability to recognize a 1-M relationship?

-- 
Galen Boyer