Transaction design seems to be really hard for some people. The transactions they build seem to based on some crazy assumptions. The problem is that benchmarking is hard because you have to build enough stuff to get a meaningful benchmark. Everyone thinks your done when really, all you did was …

Common Complaint: "This was the nth time that someone was up in arms that [X] was broken ... PL/SQL that ... has one function that is over 1,500 lines of [code]."

Not a good solution: "Find someway to measure "yucky code"."

Continuing down a path of relatively low value, the …

Check this SD Times article out: Future of data analysis lies in tools for humans, not automatic systems.

"Andreas Weigend... said that “data is only worth as much as the decisions made based on that data."

This is the entire point of IT: IT Systems Support Decision-Making. The job is …

Enterprise Applications really make people sweat. Look at this selection of StackOverflow questions. There are hundreds. People really get worked into a lather over this.

• What makes an application an “enterprise” or “enterprise-level” application?
• Is the LAMP stack appropriate for Enterprise use?
• What is “Enterprise ready”? Can we test for …

In an organization with more than one layer of management, the default answer must be "no". Folks get needlessly frustrated by this. But it's a logical consequence of multiple layers of management.

Consider that direction must come down from above. If you're suggesting something up to your manager (or in …

I finally figured out what is so bad about folks who need to "control the message."

Architecture is as much politics as technology. And some folks think that political spin and message control is required. I think it's a mistake because the urge to control the message points up a …

There's a Special Report in the January 15 SDTimes with a headline that bothers me -- a lot. In the print edition, it's called "Can ALM tame the agile beast?". Online it's ALM Tools Evolve in the Face of Agile Processes.

The online title makes a lot more sense than the …

See Paul Glen's opinion piece on Projects and the Ungrounded Middle.

There's a subtle issue here that bothers me. It's the phony narrative arc imposed on a project.

Glen says that "managers talk about beginnings and endings". This is a -- potentially -- phony narrative arc we're told to wrap around a …

It can be a fatal mistake to impose a story arc on a project.

Aristotle's Poetics is a commentary on drama, in which he identified two story arcs that are sure-fire hits: Big Man Brought Down, and Small Man Lifted Up. These are the standard "Change in Fortune" story lines …

A year and change back, I wrote this on "Exploratory Programming".

It turns out that it was a mistake. While the subclass-expansion technique is a cool way to bang out a program incrementally, in the long run, the subclassing is ill-advised.

The more I look at Python generator functions and …