Post #75,611
1/20/03 4:28:59 AM
8/21/07 6:29:24 AM
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Yep
Look, I see sort of what you are saying.
But if I follow your logic, then I'm not qualified to build your enterprise systems either. Nor is anyone else who designs software rather than pushes paper.
Thats just not true.
For stuff like this, you often have to pair people. I have built systems that take customer order entry for both residential, and business and government phone service orders (totally different domains), managed network inventory, automated provisioning of service, created a marketplace for language translation services with timing constraints, managed repair personnel and maintenance cycles, created web based questionaires, provided career lifecycle tracking in Europe, and automated a truck rental business (to name a few).
For most of these I designed the database schemas, the business objects, chunks of the UI, and the deployment structure of the system. What did I know about all of these domains going in?
Not a mother fucking thing. So I get me a SME (you need a SME - Subject Matter Expert) and I interrogate him/her until I do understand the constraints - regulatory, legal, business, financial, whatever. Its still not that hard - just time consuming.
This is different from building business software and doing data analysis for your company how?
I don't buy it. You said "We are currently looking for a Business Objects person."
If you really think you need a domain expert that happens to know Business Objects, you ought to put it that way. But thats not what you said. So far, I don't even know what domain your business is but you've mentioned the key skill is Busineess Objects. If what you say is true, then a Business Objects person isn't going to cut it either - they have to be a Business Objects person IN YOUR DOMAIN (which you still haven't mentioned).
See the disconnect? Its overly fussy. A good architect would do you if paired with a SME, or a good analyst in your domain could be paired with a decent developer. But to me its no surprise you're not finding what you want as you're not asking for what you need.
I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customer got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.
--Alan Perlis
Yep
Look, I see sort of what you are saying.
But if I follow your logic, then I'm not qualified to build your enterprise systems either. Nor is anyone else who designs software rather than pushes paper.
Thats just not true.
For stuff like this, you often have to pair people. I have built systems that take customer order entry for both residential, and business and government phone service orders (totally different domains), managed network inventory, automated provisioning of service, created a marketplace for language translation services with timing constraints, managed repair personnel and maintenance cycles, created web based questionaires, provided career lifecycle tracking in Europe, and automated a truck rental business (to name a few).
For most of these I designed the database schemas, the business objects, chunks of the UI, and the deployment structure of the system. What did I know about all of these domains going in?
Not a mother fucking thing. So I get me a SME (you need a SME - Subject Matter Expert) and I interrogate him/her until I do understand the constraints - regulatory, legal, business, financial, whatever. Its still not that hard - just time consuming.
This is different from building business software and doing data analysis for your company how?
I don't buy it. You said "We are currently looking for a Business Objects person."
If you really think you need a domain expert that happens to know Business Objects, you ought to put it that way. But thats not what you said. So far, I don't even know what domain your business is but you've mentioned the key skill is Busineess Objects. If what you say is true, then a Business Objects person isn't going to cut it either - they have to be a Business Objects person IN YOUR DOMAIN (which you still haven't mentioned).
See the disconnect? Its overly fussy. A good architect would do you if paired with a SME, or a good analyst in your domain could be paired with a decent developer. But to me its no surprise you're not finding what you want as you're not asking for what you need.
I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customer got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.
--Alan Perlis
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Post #75,801
1/20/03 8:56:47 PM
8/21/07 6:33:52 AM
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Cool
Now if we could just get the headhunters to behave accordingly we might all get a chance at food on the table.
I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customer got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.
--Alan Perlis
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Post #76,446
1/23/03 4:39:31 PM
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Re: OK, time to take my beating
I'm Confused.
You talk about BO and transaction processing in the same sentence as if you want to run those on the same box.
It's possible to do BO ( Data Warehouse ) and TP on the same box, but both kind of get compromised.
If you're serious TP (like me), then some things don't work well from the data warehouse world, like ROLLUPS and CUBES. At least you can't run them with your TP load. You have to run data warehouse stuff outside your prime TP processing window (eg. at night ). My take is that BO, Cognos, and MicroStrategy allow a business analyst to make data warehouse-like queries ( ROLLUPS and CUBES ) on a system.
So, if you're not careful, you're TP workload goes to hell in a handbasket as your business analyst is doing table scans to look at all the records for the summaries the VP wants, in the middle of the afternoon.
Maybe, if you have a big enough box, you don't care. But for our applications, the TP stuff has to add less than 1/2 second to our response time, and running data-warehouse queries puts us into 10-15 second response times very quickly.
Glen Austin
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