The star schema represents data as a table of facts (measurable values) that are associated with the various dimensions of the fact. Common dimensions include time, geography, organization, product and the like. I'm working with some folks whose facts are a bunch of medical test results, and the dimensions are …

NUT. No Unit Test Cases. Need I say more? If there are not unit tests, this isn't real programming.

MCF and NCF. Minimal/No Use of Collections Framework. The MCF defect occurs when someone uses only the Array or Vector classes. The NCF defect occurs when someone uses only primitive …

What I said: "How about using the RDBMS product appropriately ? It's for persistence. Do processing in another product, appropriate for processing: Java."

What it became: "why not use a file system and skip the expense and overhead of an RDBMS ?"

I was shocked that numerous good features of the RDBMS …

It's not that spreadsheets are evil incarnate, it's just that there are so many ways to abuse them. Spreadsheets put a veneer of structure over some information. Bad spreadsheet design, worse yet, puts unstructured information into a hard-to-manipulate format.

I've complained about this before. See Great Quotes about the Spreadsheet …

I'm not a fan of XML as the one true language. I've griped before about the attractive nuisance of XML.

Recently, I saw Sean McGrath's New Realities , which lead me to Project Zero , a RESTful/JSONic SOA architecture. Their blog includes postings like A run-time for "the New Reality .

I …

Some of Cringley's The Truth About IT Consultants is good stuff. His Type "A" and Type "C" are both stories of consultants who are brought in because they have specific skills. In the "A" case, it's a technical skill, and in the "C" case it's project management.

In both cases …

Here's the analysis.

"60 cents of every IT dollar goes to maintaining existing systems". "This increased 'run the business' spending has consumed budget resources that were originally earmarked for more strategic and transformational investment," writes Gartner analyst Jed Rubin.

So, what happens with the "innovation" portion of the budget?

In …

I've seen a couple of recent use case problems. The first recent failure of use cases was particularly alarming. It was a small application; a few use cases, a couple of actors.

One of the actors was labeled as "End User". Seriously. Few labels could be as vague as End …

See the Electric Skateboard in XKCD. "You don't realize how much time you were spending on the boring parts until you don't have to do them anymore."

A helpful answer to "Why is Python so cool?" Fewer Boring Parts.

Some reading:

1. Flexible Software is Error-Enabling Software , by Sean McGrath. If users can make changes, they can make mistakes. Why would you allow users to make changes? It's their process, it's their data. But, everyone in IT is absolutely sure that end users a lying gypsies. After all, if you …