I just wanted to remind everyone that we are currently waiving our posting fee for employment opportunities to our discussion groups for direct hiring organizations.  If the successful candidate will be working for your company, at your company, you don't have to pay a fee for the posting.

Job postings remain on the boards for 60 days.

We accept job postings for full time, part time, contract, and regular employment positions.  While we accept postings for a wide variety of positions, we do expect them to be generally focused on the same sorts of topics on the discussion boards - tools, modeling, architecture, etc.

We need to know the following information about the opportunity:

1. Where the work will be located (City)
2. What type of opportunity it is (W-2, Full Time, Permanent, 1099, Contract, contract to hire, etc.)
3. Whether your company sponsors applicants for immigration purposes (H1B, TN, permanent resident, etc.)

So if your company is looking for the type of bright, passionate, motivated, interesting people who are members of our groups, forward along the posting information to me at website @ InfoAdvisors.com and I'll take care of getting it distributed.

Brian Walker has written a series of articles at SearchSQLServer about nightmare database designs he's seen.  Some of these observations sound familiar, I'm sad to report.

I had the chance to examine three business databases in five weeks and I'm still staggered by what I found. These are SQL Server databases serving as critical business foundations for companies generating millions of dollars in revenue per year. Every day, hundreds of employees are counting on these databases to deliver accuracy, stability and performance. Personally, I would not trust these databases to store a simple catalog of the 2,600 songs on my iPod.

The databases support their respective businesses, but they are plagued by performance problems. There are many issues within the databases, but the businesses are simply working around the issues with server hardware and production DBAs. It would be very difficult to fix the issues because several applications have been coded to accommodate the database design flaws. With extra expenses and lost productivity, business is hurting. The database design is also making SQL Server look weak.

Evil in retrospect

So, what's wrong with the business databases I examined? Everything. Seriously. They are poorly normalized. Some of the tables have no primary key constraints. Many of the relationships between tables are not enforced with foreign key constraints. The use of indexing is haphazard. Essential business logic is hidden in massive triggers. Many of the column data types are inappropriate. How about consistency? Well, there's more consistency in style among first round contestants on "American Idol."

Check out the rest of the article at:

SQL Server database design disasters: What not to do

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Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture Reading, Watching and Listening

https://www.cibcrunforthecure.com/html/personal_page.asp?track=3056203&languageid=1 

I am participating in the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure, on Sunday, October 5th and I am asking for your support for a cause that is very important to me.

Help create a future without breast cancer by making a donation today! Donating online is quick, easy and secure. Your donation will be added to the critical funds raised by the Run, and will be directed towards research, education and awareness programs.

I realize you get many requests for support, so if this request does not fit with your gifting plan for this year, I’d be happy to just hear your wishes that I finish this race upright and smiling.

Thank you. I appreciate your support!

Karen Lopez

Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation: Run for the Cure

I was shocked to read that Michael Hammer, co-author of Reengineering the Corporation, passed away recently.

BOSTON, MA, September 4 – Dr. Michael Hammer, one of the world’s leading business thinkers, died early this morning at a Boston hospital after collapsing from apparent cranial bleeding Friday, August 22. He was 60 years old.

“We are all shocked and deeply saddened by Michael’s premature passing. He was a true business visionary and one of the most provocative and passionate teachers I have ever met,” Jeffrey Goding, Managing Director of Hammer and Company. “Our thoughts and sympathies are with his family at this difficult time.”

Michael was best known as a public speaker and co-author, with James Champy, of the 1993 book Reengineering the Corporation, which spent more than a year on The New York Times and other bestseller lists. Michael is also the author of The Reengineering Revolution (1995), Beyond Reengineering (1997), and The Agenda (2001).

 

Reengineering is one of the classics of modern process architectures, if not the only one.

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Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture Reading, Watching and Listening

I was reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond, an online article about two types of development approaches.  I stumbled upon this great quote:

9. Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.

While the article is focused on open source development, there are some great concepts in it that could easily apply to data and process model development.

By the way, Raymond is paraphrasing a quote from Fred Brooks of The Mythical Man Month, a classic in itself.

Brooks, Chapter 9: ``Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowchart; it'll be obvious.'' Allowing for thirty years of terminological/cultural shift, it's the same point.

This does remind me it is time to read the Mythical Man Month again.  You should, too.

When Is a Rose Not a Rose?

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Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture Reading, Watching and Listening