Control Freak

Did you ever notice, once you diagnose someone's inner Freak, how easy they are to lead around by the nose? See TrueNames.

What? Wait! I don't understand! Explain it to me right now!

Take fair warning, if a product has a custom language for interacting with the system or its database that doesn't have equivalent APIs in a common programming language, it 'will be' costly to use, customize, and maintain.

This is referred to as Control Freak, as all of the control in the system is constrained to the language provided. Too often these languages were Architected by Implication and have been expanded on an 'as needed' basis.

These specialized languages tend to create high priced experts who have the specialized training in the control language. Sometimes, in a commmercial product, the vendor will restrict knowledge of this control language. This steers business to the vendor's own consulting services. Most commonly seen in big enterprise software "solutions".

Q: Knock-knock.

A: Who's there?

Q: Control freak. Now say, "Control freak, who?"

External links:

http://www.idealliance.org/papers/dx_xmle03/papers/03-01-08/03-01-08.html