Re: Thoughts on "Love Your Database"

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 9:55 AM, Pierre Chevalier Géologue <
pierrechevaliergeol(at)free(dot)fr> wrote:

> Le 04/05/2016 15:25, John McKown a écrit :
>
>> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 8:13 AM, Geoff Winkless <pgsqladmin(at)geoff(dot)dj
>> <mailto:pgsqladmin(at)geoff(dot)dj>>wrote:
>>
>> ​<snip>
>>
>> The sensible way is to do it as John wrote - to restrict access rights
>> to everyone except admin to calling functions only. That way the
>> functions are written by the people who are paid to understand the
>> business rules and the data behind it, and the application developers
>> can ask those experts to do the heavy lifting for them. Having to
>> persuade management that they should no longer be able to connect the
>> database to MS Access and make changes that way will usually put an
>> end to that pure model, though. :)
>>
>>
>> ​Allowing PHBs direct access t​o company data is a nasty thing.
>>
>
> Sorry, what is a PHB? Our friend google didn't help me much on this
> matter.
>

​Ah. Sorry. PHB is a "Pointy Haired Boss" and is a reference to the comic
"Dilbert". Dilbert is a engineer who works for a boss who is a complete
idiot & has his hair moussed up at the sides (I guess it is moussed).

>
>
> They become like some users who "know Excel". They are now just as
>> knowledgeable as someone who's been doing this for years. I've actually
>> heard one say something akin to: "Damn it, I can write Excel formulas. I
>> know very well that an new function on the web site could be written in
>> less than a day, if you'd just get off you a$$ and do it."
>>
>
> Hm. Sounds familiar...
> I usually call "excelitis" a sort of mental disease related to a use and
> abuse of Excel, up to the point where one cannot imagine data which is
> *not* in a table-like array. And they think that they do Relational
> Database Management... In the 1990's, I met many-many deeply sick
> persons. I had been infected for a while, I must confess.
>

​Yes, I keep reading in another forum about how to interface the R language
so that the users can continue to input data into Excel, but then have it
run a R language script to produce some output. So many there are trying to
use Excel as their "user interface" because it is just about all the user
knows. I had a manager, long ago, who used a Lotus 1-2-3​ spreadsheet to
contain all his memos. I was glassy eyed in disbelief. He also would use
his hand calculator to add up the numbers in the spreadsheet to be sure
that the summation function in the spreadsheet didn't make a mistake.
<shudder/>

>
> À+
> Pierre

--
The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our
certitude.

Maranatha! <><
John McKown