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Re: [ontolog-forum] Quote for the day

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: David Eddy <deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 09:50:35 -0500
Message-id: <546D5606-02E0-4E55-AEC6-998D2A27549C@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Mike -    (01)

On 2011-01-04, at 6:48 AM, Mike Bennett wrote:    (02)

> And without business review and oversight of what this data is
> becoming in the arcane world of data, because they have left it
> to the data geeks to deal with it.    (03)


Excellent description of what actually happens.    (04)

Not that I can vouch for the accuracy, precision, & unambiguous  
language in business documents, at least (I'd like to think) such  
documents are reviewed by multiple parties from different  
perspectives (legal, business, etc.) thereby editing out ambiguities.    (05)

These are what I—as a techie—refer to as "formal documents"...  
written by humans, edited by humans for human consumption.    (06)


Unfortunately, as you so aptly describe, toss this knowledge into the  
systems development process & we end up with programs & databases  
that are not read/inspected/edited for understanding.  The primary  
rules in systems are (1)  get it working yesterday (particularly in  
financial services), so difficult-to-impossible to understand short  
cuts are the rule of the day, and (2) if it works no one from the  
business side will ever read code or database schemas for  
understandability.    (07)

In programming "code reviews" or "peer reviews" are known to be one  
of the most productive means of improving code quality.  Code reviews  
with a business analyst is something that simply doesn't happen as  
far as I know.    (08)

I can think of one single instance where I (as a programmer)  
participated in a review with the business/system owner.    (09)


The fundamental issue here is there's no formal mechanism that  
attaches the business language & definitions to what gets written in  
code.    (010)


I would say that the business types have abdicated their  
responsibility & the data folks have done the best they can with what  
they have.  Please to remember that the data folks are typically  
excluded from the business side of the discussion.    (011)

___________________
David Eddy
deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx    (012)

781-455-0949    (013)


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