Mark,
In my early days of consulting, many years ago, I had a client whose CFO
insisted that anything that I wrote that *could* be written in English
(UniQuery under its original Microdata name) be written that way, even if it
was less efficient, because then if it needed changing when I was not
on-site, he could do it himself. After he was let go, I got a frantic call
from his assistant - a million dollar order was "missing" on the system.
Turns out he had modified one of my dictionaries and created his own version
of a report to only show an order once, not on subsequent months, because
the production team did not want to get flak from upper management about
orders that had not yet completely shipped. It took me a while to figure
out what he had done and fix it so that they did not suddenly find
themselves losing track of the huge orders. It also appeared that some
reports had been modified (either in the dictionaries or in the selection
criteria) so that some cash audit reports were, shall we say, less than
clear in terms of what was not reported. So, *that* kind of user (no
inhibitions at all!) does need to be constrained, if only so that there will
be documentation of what the system is doing after they leave the company!
Susan Lynch
F W Davison & Company, Inc.
----- Original Message -----
From: "MAJ Programming" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 11:41 AM
Subject: Re: [U2] A question of dictionaries.
I should add a comment to your post regarding the user changing a reporting
column.
This borders on a very slippery topic regarding the user's access to the
system. In my travels, many systems prevent their access to TCL. Those
that
allow access only give the users a very, very limited set of commands like
LIST and SORT and perhaps SELECt but never EDIT or BASIC etc.
Plus the user's natural inhibitions prevent them from learning (retaining)
what they may see us typing.
So I guess my question is what kind of 'user' could actually change a
reporting column to begin with. In many of my clients' systems there are
formal, menu-driven reports with specific indicators in the headings for
report identification. The users who make their own English report never,
never use HEADING so that would be my first sign of a renegade report.
I don't use EVAL or other live dict items and I can't imagine the most
serious non-MV user crossing over that line. We programmers, having the
keys
to the entire castle, sometimes feel that the users are only one small
step
behind us. Everytime I think that they're near me, I'm reminded of how
contained they actually are.
For over a quarter of a century I've been trying to show users the
simplicity of creating their own reports in English. I've found that you
can
lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink. I've seen users
decline retaining education after attending Crystal Reports classes, Excel
Classes, Powerpoint classes and even MS Access classes. I don't think they
will take a liking to our dictionaries.
My 2 cents
Mark Johnson
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