BitWorking has an interesting post that talks about data from a document-centric point of view. He makes an eloquent defense of the peopole who build and use shadow systems when he says:

“I am not attacking relational databases, they have their role to play and are very useful tools, nor am I attacking people that use databases. What I am doing is taking people to task that berate users for putting too much data into spreadsheets and not databases. We, as software developers, have let them down and not provided them with tools that work with how they’ve been trained to work with the data, the failing is on our side, not theirs.”

Sometimes we forget that the process of conceptualizing, defining, and implementing our information architecture has to move as fast as the organizations that we are supporting. If they don’t, then we force people to do an end around to get things done. This is a form of innovation, although it is one that can cause serious woes around information quality and systems integration, especially in a corporate environment.

Keep your architecture and practices lean, mean, and practical and be a partner to your entire organization. Don’t let your work be the thing that holds someone back from productivity!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2006 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Databases, Information Architecture, Systems Integration, Reporting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.