Nobody Learns

Nobody learns.

At least they don't learn from other people's mistakes.

<rant> Today, I read that LarryEllison said, "You should have fewer, larger databases" (http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010711/tc/ellison_touts_large_databases_1.html). This sounds exactly like the failed experiment in DataWarehouses a few years ago and IBM's failed experiment in The Repository about 15-20 years ago. Of course the reason why these things failed had far less to do with technology than they did with the internal politics of companies and the massive job (read expense) of migrating silo-style corporate databases into a single one with a coherent set of business rules. </rant>

-- MarkAddleman

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp. -- now that's right where I'd go for unbiased information on databases. Not. ;->

Mark, which experiment in DataWarehouse failed a few years ago? A few years ago, I worked on a data warehouse project for a DJIA-component company to track development of new product quality and shipment schedules. This data warehouse is still in use by the development department. (However, the additional management reporting system that I was brought in to contract on has since been turned off, another in a string of projects where I was paid a lot of money by managers to develop database-backed web sites they never used or pulled the plug on before they were finished.) Doesn't Wal-Mart still use data warehouses? Isn't TerraServer? a data warehouse?

NobodyLearns, including me ;) I was too sweeping in my rant. Like you say, there are a number of success stories out there. I have had opportunities to see DataWarehouse and other projects fail that horizontally crossed large organizations. The primary reason for their failure was political, not technological. I feel for the poor Oracle consultants trying to implement Larry's vision of a single, organization-wide database.

Even more so, I feel for any poor CIO who buys into this vision. Perhaps those are the people who should learn, but don't.

The pendulum rocks back and forth grazing the truth in the middle.

It's an unusual developer that learns from their own mistakes.

It's a rare developer that learns from their successes.

It's a rarer one still that learns from other people's mistakes.

So few developers learn from other people's successes, but they gain such great advantages when they do, that one may make a handsom living off merely pointing this out to those that don't.

CategoryEducation