(continuing with 100% wild *ss speculation)
Tim,
I thought this might be of interest to the person that asked the
original question, so am replying via the list.
My "take" is that human nature does *not* automatically support an
organizational culture that values esoteric theories and/or
disciplined methodologies (unless you are in Germany?), or bring
about the willingness to expend resources to implement good models.
In other words, individual conciousness is expressed *via
institutional structures/practices* within a collective.
So, the "organizational culture" within an IT department/
infrastructure is presumably dependent on some set of objectives that
are expressed (or are absent, as the case may be) in the larger
organization's business model & "culture". An organization's value
(appreciation) of methods/discipline doesn't appear from thin air,
although its appearance might be more probable in certain cultural
contexts than others.
eg, some d*ckhead damager says "get Remedy". The grumbling dba,
deciding s/he dosn't want to get fired, does it. Despite the
arguments of normalization zealots, Remedy "works" (however painfully
to the IT staff).
At that point, the people that make "business decisions" (or those
that create th "climate" in which business decision take place) are
aware that the position of the normalization zealots is dependent on
far more nuance than was initially presented by the zealots. Next
time someone asks why some IT project costs so much, the damager
might consider the extra resources needed to do things the way that
the zealots want, to be expendible.
As you may know, Peoplesoft started marketing a University software
package about 2 or 3 years ago. It was initially sold as "vaporware".
The first iterations were reported to be big time sucky. A consortium
of colleges in the midwest sued Peoplesoft over the crappy
implementations and lack of response to very serious production
problems. The failures and giant costs were front page news in the
"prestigious" national journal _Chonicle of Higher Education_.
However, upon hearing from high levels at Peoplesoft that the bugs
would be solved in the "next version", California decided to continue
on the $350,000,000 project to convert to Peoplesoft on 25 University
campuses.
The world if full of evil & the taxpayers are restless. :)
regards,
ep
On 23 Apr 2001, at 14:27, Tim Sawmiller wrote:
Date sent: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 14:27:50 -0400
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
...
>
> As far as people making business decisions, why do they need to
> know about denormalization? That's an implementation issue. If
> they hired good IT people, then they're ok. If they didn't,
> they're scr*wed. Such is life in the big city. We need to get
> some successes under our belt so we can preach with confidence
> and having refenceable clients available.
...
> >>> "Eric D. Pierce" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/23/01 02:06PM >>>
> And I'd be curious to know why you are curious!
>
> What I have gathered so far from the discussion is that normalization
> zealotry, probably similar to other purist perspectives in life,
> doesn't get any particularly huge respect in the "real world".
>
> In other words, people that make business decisions have never heard
> of any "conventional wisdom" that violating normalized db designs will
> automatically wreck their organization. Like many other things, their
> IT infrastructure will inefficiently plod along, and suffer the burden
> of crappy models (grumbling dbas and all....) in spite of a lack of
> conformance to theoretical orthodoxy.
>
> I would guess that in some cases, an organization's IT folks might be
> able to present a coherent business case for zealous normalization,
> but doing so is probably a rare skill, and perhaps even more rarely
> appreciated by the organization.
>
> Unfortunately the situation for "structured denormalization" is
> probably about the same, except that it may not have quite the
> "political" baggage, and so can just be used as a technical method.
...
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Author: Eric D. Pierce
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