RE: [AM] Unfounded assertion

Steven Gordon <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.programming.modeling.agile
Message-ID <[email protected]>
I am sorry, but this attitude that the designers of a database are responsible for anticipating the future requirements is a big contributor to making the data side of the enterprise so resistant to agility.

You cannot anticipate future requirements.  A new set of users want what the users did not want it 5 years, so learn to live with change.  The sin of the past was NOT that the database designers should have thought of this unstated requirement.  The sin of the past was that the application developers used the database directly throughout their code.  This tight coupling is what makes it hard to change either the database or the applications without changing the other.  

Placing the blame on the database designers will just embolden data modelers to waste time trying to perfectly model the whole future of the enterprise before they will risk producing a database design or changing an existing one.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gaythorpe, Dagna [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 2:47 AM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: RE: [AM] Unfounded assertion


But if the users want the name field split, don't waste time wondering what to call it - that time would be better spent explaining to the person who designed the database that they messed up and should have thought of this one, and then finding out that they did, but the contents of Name are in no clear format - surname + initials, forename + surname, initials + surname, all in one field in the source system (which isn't this one)... 
Regards, 
Dagna 
Dagna Gaythorpe 
Data Architect 
International IT 
tttt COLT TELECOM GROUP PLC 
Beaufort House, 15 St Botolph Street, 
London EC3A 7QN 
t   (+ 44) 020 7 390 7896 
f   (+ 44) 020 7 947 1176 
e [email protected] 

For more information about AM, visit the Agile Modeling Home Page at www.agilemodeling.com
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