By Karen Lopez on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 6:04 PM

Following up on my recent blog entry about gender differences and the acrid backlash I get when I make media appearances on the topic, a recent article in the Globe and Mail covers a study done by the University of Chicago.  In this study, women are divided into two groups and one is told they are being tested on math skills, while the other group was told that they were being tested on why men do better at math than women. 

The women who were told they were being tested on why men are better than women at math had only 80% accuracy on the test, down from 90% in their pretest.

The women reported being distracted by thoughts such as: "I thought about how boys are usually better than girls at math, so I was trying harder not make mistakes"

Among women not given the stereotype message, performance improved slightly  After the math test, the women were also given a standard memory test and it was found that women exposed to the stereotyping also did less well there.

It made me think back to the computer science chair of a university CS program who told me, flat out, that if he were forced to admit more women to his program he'd have to dumb it down so much that no one would be able to even log in.  I wonder what messages he sends to the few female students dumb enough to take his courses?

Oh, and if you are male and think that this story isn't of interest to you, you may want to put your hands on a copy of this article the lead researcher has written:

Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2005). When high-powered people fail: Working memory and “choking under pressure” in math. Psychological Science, 16, 101-105.

I think that one sounds interesting, too.

Don't worry, be happy....

By Karen Lopez on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 3:41 PM

I once made such a stupid mistake for a client that it almost cost the client well into the million dollars range.  It was early in my career and I was working for a consulting firm that had a client in litigation.  Their was a large volume of test data that needed to be entered into a database, then about 3,000 graphs needed to be plotted.  It took a long time, but only because there was a great deal of data entry to be done.  Easy as cake! 

Except that I didn't really check my work that carefully, and the graphs all ended up having a duplicate data point at the end.  Every single one of them had an extra data point.  Even those of you without an inner Matlock can see that these graphs weren't going to work in court.  But I didn't find the mistake, my boss did.  And he couldn't find me (this was before cellphones), so he had to track down another programmer from another company to reproduce the graphs based on the data.

So I ponied up the money to pay for the impromptu programmer, swallowed my pride (not that there was any left), apologized, and wrote up a test plan procedure that included external reviews of test data long before the next court date.  When I ran into my former boss years later, I mentioned that I was still embarrassed by that mistake.  Either he was being very kind to me or he was the forgiving type, because he said he didn't remember it at all.

I'm walking down memory lane because a cleaning service owner is going to show up at our home tonight we fired our last service.  My having to go through the time it takes to tell someone what we require, then training their staff on what we want is just a pain.  But we have to do it because we fired our last cleaning service.

I just can't help thinking how this must be how managers feel when they have to fire an employee that isn't working out.  He knows he has to do it, but it takes longer to fire someone and hire a new person that it does to keep picking up the slack of the...slacker.  So on and on it goes, with the manager getting more and more frustrated trying to mentor the worker into doing the right thing and the slacker getting worse and worse at his job because he's being asked to do something he isn't capable of doing.  I'm betting that for most managers of a poorly performing workers, a person who is bad at making mistakes is the one that will get fired first.

So while I am looking forward to having a cleaning service again, I'm dreading the whole process of finding one that fits, then managing the staff while they are here.  It's hard for me to clean, though, when I'm on the road so much, so hiring in it is.

Our last cleaners, Merry Maids of Scarborough, started out nice enough, but it went down hill from there, fast.  We gave both the owner of the franchise and her staff written instructions.  Included in the instructions were large print, bolded warnings about something that would be damaged by contact with any water.   So the first team we had kept water away from the sensitive item.  However, just like an outsourced development team, turnover on the cleaning team was high.  Not long into our contract, staff started changing on a weekly basis, so I had to jump in to do training...then I had to keep an eye on the team because I found that they were leaving water all over the bolded, large print warned item.  I had a short meeting "No water, at all on this.  Do not put any water on this.  If you accidentally put water on it, dry it up immediately.  Carry a towel so that you can."  Nods of agreement, and on with the work.

But the next week the team was new again, and I had to repeat my dire warnings. And yet a newer team the following week.  I felt as if I was stuck in a wash, rinse, repeat cycle.  I called the owner to tell her that she was letting here staff damage our items.  I had noticed that in addition to the water issue, their use of a specialized device was leaving large chunks of paint and drywall out of our walls.  Large, one inch dents and chunks in our walls.    All at exactly the height of this device, which just happened to have square corners, right at the same level of the chunks missing from our walls.

In addition, I found that the cleaning agent used on our furniture was removing the finish on our furniture and then being transferred to all of our mirrors as new, under-trained staff was mixing rag use on all kinds of surfaces.

So I'd had enough and called the owner of Merry Maids of Scarborough.  Her husband took the call and I shared my frustrations.  He was very understanding and knew exactly what caused the perfect triangle shaped holes in our walls, what cleaning agent the staff were using incorrectly, and what was causing furniture finish to end up on our mirrors and windows.  He arranged to come visit to take photos for his insurance company...and I was happy.

Well, I thought I was happy.  Mr. Merry Maid did not come out -- he sent one of the same cleaning staff people who had damaged the home.  After the staff person looked at the perfectly shaped triangles spotting our walls, the perfectly concentric circles of water damage from a wet bucket left for hours where it shouldn't have been, splashes of water left too long on our finished wood, and the hardened swirls of cleaning agent and furniture finishing on our expensive mirrors, she declared that all was damage from our cat.

What?

If our cat could may perfectly circular, concentric circles in a wooden finish, I'd be putting her on show.  If she could punch perfectly triangular holes in our walls, I'd rent her out for art shows.  If she could some how work with furniture finish, I'd work her day and night refinishing our floors.

Yes, it turns out that the teams of untrained staff at Merry Maids Scarborough were incapable of doing any of this damage, but some how, our cat was.

So we fired them.  Not because they damaged our walls, our furniture, our mirrors, our floors, but because they didn't know how to deal with their making a mistake -- they weren't good at making mistakes. 

Sure, we all make them...me, I've made some real doozies.  Some of them were even pretty darn stupid mistakes.  Some where unforgivable.  Some make for a good story and not much else.

When my team members make a mistake, I want them to do it well.  I want them to:

• Find out that they made a mistake long before I do
• Figure out how to fix it
• Fix it, even if it means staying late, missing dinner, or missing a movie
• Make a checklist, tool, or process that will keep them from making the same or similar mistakes in the future.
• Ask others how to keep from making the same mistake again
• Say they are sorry they made a mistake (not "I'm sorry you are mad" or "I'm sorry that guy told you about my mistake" or "Your cat did it, not me.)

How could I trust a company like Merry Maids of Scarborough to send staff to my home if they had no clue what caused the damage and had no interest in fixing it, and then wanted to blame it on the cat?  And just how stupid did they think I was when they said my cat had all these wonderful talents?  How could they let their staff tell me that "I don't have to follow any thing you put in writing".?  How could they send the person who caused the damage to assess whether they did the damage?  Trust them? They don't know for trust.

And not only did I not trust them any longer, now perhaps you don't, either. I've worked with lots of bad service firms over the years, and the only ones I can remember the names of where people who didn't know how to fully fix their mistakes.  Maybe you'll remember that Merry Maids of Scarborough thinks our cat is a wizard of some sort, but probably you'll remember that they didn't want to fix their msitakes.

If you've made a mistake, the first thing you must do it admit it, fix it, keep it from happening again, and say you are sorry.  If you do that, nearly everyone you work with will either forget that the mistake happened at all or who did it.  And some time a few years in the future, you'll be sitting around in a pub, telling others about this great story and how well it ended. 

Trust me.

 

By Karen Lopez on Sunday, May 27, 2007 10:30 PM

 

How do you print an ERwin model to PDF?

Well, if you are running the current version of CA ERwin Data Modeler, you can easily product PDFs from the Report Builder window.  Just choose the proper format when you get to the template window, as shown below.  In fact, we have a video tutorial right here at InfoAdvisors.com that shows you how to produce a report, with images, of your data models.  Just visit our Articles and Videos page via the tabs above to see all our CA ERwin r7 videos.

But what do you do if you are currently using an older version of ERwin?

I recommend that you either get your hands on a copy of Adobe Acrobat if you have many PDF publishing needs.  If you budget and needs are more simple, I recommend you try CutePDF, which is freeware - no charge.:

Create PDF documents on the fly — for Free!
 
Portable Document Format (PDF) is the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world.  CutePDF Writer (formerly CutePDF Printer) is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a "printer subsystem". This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button!
 
FREE for personal and commercial use!  No watermarks!  No Popup Web Ads!

We have been using CutePDF for more than 5 years and I can vouch for the no spyware, no ads, no junk included install.  This is not ad-supported, nag where, or even charityware.  It's just a great, valuable tiny app that works.

CutePDF works like a little imaginary printer that instead of printing to paper, prints to a PDF on your hard drive.  So instead of going to report builder, you only need to go to FILE / PRINT SETUP to choose the CutePDF writer from your list of printers.

 

 

 See, it looks just like a printer on your print dialog.

After you have filled in these options, CutePDF will prompt you for a name and location for your new PDF file and you are done.

The great think about using CutePDF is that it work anywhere in Windows where you can print.  So if you want, you can use it with ER/Studio, Excel, Word...everywhere there's a print function, you can print to a PDF.

It works with any print capable application - at least we haven't found an application where it doesn't work.

I think that CutePDF is a valuable addition to your personal and professional toolkit.

Check it out.

By Karen Lopez on Sunday, May 27, 2007 10:04 PM

What is Visible Analyst and Visible Advantage?

InfoAdvisors.com offers two Visible System's related discussion groups for users of Visible Systems' Visible Analyst and Visible Advantage.

Visible Analyst is a modeling tool offered by Visible Systems, Inc. at visible.com .  This tools supports data, process, and UMl modeling, as well as the Zachman Framework, as you can see from the screen shot on the left.

Visible Analyst supports modeling from strategic planning through working with databases.  It supports ERDs, Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs), Functional Decompositions, Structure Charts, Class Modeling, State Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, Collaboration Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, Use Case Diagrams,

It includes sub-modeling, an extensible repository, conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling, simple versioning, and change control.

Visible.com offers a free trial download, as well as pricing and licensing information.  Of note, all licenses are floating, meaning that a license is not tied to a user or machine.  Also, Visible offers very attractive academic licensing. 

Visible Advantage and Universal Data Models

Visible.com also offers Visible Advantage, another multi-level, multi model tool.  You may also purchase a Universal Data Model edition that comes with template or pattern data models .

InfoAdvisors can assist you in evaluating modeling tools to meet your specific needs and environment. 

By Karen Lopez on Sunday, May 27, 2007 9:07 PM

Free Data Models?!!!!

Barry Williams at DatabaseAnswers.org has done a wonderful thing -- he has put together more than 450 free kick start data models for you to use when you want to start modeling a part of your project.

The snippet view I've posted above goes on for pages.  There really are more than four hundred data models to look at.

He writes on his website:

Why do I do this for free ?
I design these Data Models for free to give something back to the Database community that has provided me with a good (and interesting) living for the past 15 years.

Each Model is usually what I can do in the 20 minutes each day of voluntary work that I allocate from my consulting work.

My intention is to provide a wide range of 'Kick Start' Models that anyone can use as a starting-point, and could extend cleanly and logically, with appropriate reference to the Business Rules.

It is not my intention to provide Models that can be used off-the-shelf to meet the requirements of a large commercial organisation.
After all, that is one of the things I do for a living !!!

Barry has spent over 5 years putting these together, in 20 minute increments.  I applaud is reasons and his offering them to you for free, even in an Access database if you want.

Be sure you send Barry a thank you for supplying these.  It's just wonderful that he has shared them with the Data Management community.

By Karen Lopez on Friday, May 25, 2007 5:42 PM

This came to me via the ACM technews newsletter.  Researchers at Penn State have interviewed 92 female IT professionals to find out what they want out of their IT jobs.

The typical recruiters sales pitch emphasizing job promotion and security acts to keep women out of the information technology jobs, according to a Penn State research study of 92 female IT practitioners.

Human-resources personnel need to recognize that women have diverse values and motivations throughout their careers and tailor hiring and retention practices to fit those needs, said Eileen Trauth, professor of information sciences and technology in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology, who authored the paper What Do Women Want": An Investigation of Career Anchors among Women in the IT Workforce.

While women represent almost 60 percent of the workforce, they account for only a little more than 32 percent of the IT workforce. Addressing women’s under-representation not only will help tackle the anticipated IT worker shortage but will help foster a diverse workforce, a cornerstone of both innovation and economic development, she added.

The study focused on career anchors, those thing important to a person in choosing a job.  Researchers found that women aren't all the same -- that individuals have different reasons to take a particular job.  Whew!

But I'm not posting this because the study is that interesting or new.  I'm posting so that others can see the type of hostile environment that exists for the few women in the IT profession.  If you follow the links to the article, you'll see the type of wacko, hatred-laced comments that other IT professionals make when anyone talks about why women are either opting out of or leaving the IT profession.

For instance,this bigot wrote:

"Geeze give it a rest some like it some don't the reason theres fewer women in IT is because its primarily a Man's job.

Why is nobody writing articles about how theres so few women construction workers? or too few women lumberjacks? Because some jobs are preffered by men others by women. Just because most women don't take interest in it is not a reason to write an article about it... honestly I dont even know why I read it. " [sic]

Then later

Submitted by Duke (not verified) on Fri, 2007-05-25 02:59.

Agree completely. The female mind thrives better where it can practice dissimulation, gossip, chicanery, etc. Women pounding out code are like bodybuilders in figure skates.

Not too bad, pretty much par for the course when certain IT professionals comment on the declining number of females in the profession.  In fact, a national IT publication posted a letter to the editor in response to an interview with me on gender issues in IT that claimed that encouraging women to consider IT careers was the same and encouraging fat, aging men into becoming super models.  Yes, not only did someone in the IT profession write such a gender attack, but the editor actually published it.  I can't imagine the same editor publishing the letter if it compared IT careers based on race or religion.  But I guess women are fair game.  In fact, I run into this all the time - that some IT professionals believe that there is some sort of gender-based defect that keeps all females from being competent in technology.  I hear it from bosses, from clients, and from friends.

To add insult to injury, the Canadian national press service put together a charming little article that was published in many Canadian newspapers on the decline in female enrollment in computer science and information systems programs around the world....and they included a nice transition between two of my quotes that read:

And it is a great way to meet men.

So all the work of many talented, senior level IT professionals across Canada had been reduced to some sort of hookup/dating/sex service for men. I was outraged, but, hey, that's the press service in action.

I don't think there is some magic number that would be the "right" number of women in IT.  But I do know that many women are leaving and most IT educational programs around the world are seeing significantly declining numbers of females even considering entering their programs.  When I was in school, it was almost 50-50 men and women studying IS, but these days it is down to 10-15%.  That is the magnitude of decline.

But why do I think this is important?  Not for some sort of equality, quota, or diversity goal in itself.  I believe we need to fix young women's perception problems with our profession. It is not boring.  It is not about keyboards.  It is not about geeks and gadgets (Ok, I love my gadgets, but that's just me, not my profession).  It is important that young women understand what's available to them:

1. IT careers are well paying (no matter what you feel about your current salary, over all it is GOOD. )
2. IT careers offer more flexible working hours and locations
3. IT careers are incredibly rewarding (if yours isn't, then you need to find a better project or job).
4. IT careers do require a good understanding of math subjects, but that doesn't mean it's an all math job.
5. IT careers are fun.
6. IT careers can make a difference in the  world.

So all the bigots out there can scream about it being a feminist thing, or some sort of gender-presentation thing, or that somehow one must hire stupid people in order to encourage more women, or that there is some sort of natural obstacle to being female and in IT, but they are wrong, dead wrong.  In fact, I have a much lower opinion of their own intelligence when the tell me that in order to increase the number of women IT they'd have to dumb down the job so much that no one would be able to even log in, let alone code.

It's time that we did something to fix this problem.  I have lots of idea, some that work, some that I don't know if they will work.  But pretty soon there will be so few women in IT that all our systems will be focused only on 'guy things'...if you use the same logic that the bigots do.

Let's do something to fix this serious problem.

 

 

 

 

 

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:35 PM

I've posted a request for input over on the Data Modeling Discussion Group from you, our experienced and smart community members.  

I'm working on a presentation about getting along with (collaborating with) the people who are direct or indirect users of your products.  For instance, developers, DBAs, QA testers, etc.

I know in your current organizations everything is just peachie and you don't have any problems working with other groups, but in the case of former projects, what have you done to encourage better collaboration with these roles?

I do always recommend that DAs, as much as physically possible, sit next to the developers and DBAs when they are working with the models or DDL.

But I'm turning to you now for your input.

So if you have some input, head on over to the discussion and give us your 2 cents on collaboration and getting results.

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:30 PM

Neil Buchwalter has posted on the ERwin Discussion Group that a new release of the CA Modeling Suite is now available:

Today, the CA ERwin Modeling Team is pleased to announce the release of CA Modeling Suite r7.2. Included in the suite are CA ERwin Data Modeler, CA ERwin Process Modeler, CA ERwin Model Manager, CA ERwin Model Navigator and CA ERwin Data Model Validator. This product release extends the usability and end-user support of our latest product-line based on market analysis and customer feedback and additionally, incorporates new features and functionality that reflect improvement requests made by our customer base. Highlights of this product release include:

CA ERwin Data Modeler (ERwin DM)
• Out of the box full relational support for SQL Server 2005
• Updated Database Support
• Integration with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals (VSDB Pro)
• Usability and UI Enhancements
• Improved Complete Compare Functionality

CA ERwin Model Manager (ERwin MM)
• Security banner message that displays when a mart connection is established
• Support for non-versioned model libraries

CA ERwin Process Modeler (ERwin PM)
• Bi-directional IDEF3 arrows
• Model templates
• Enhanced model property inheritance during model split operations
• IDEF3 junction renumbering
• Single instance design (when opening multiple models from Windows Explorer)

Regards,
C. Neil Buchwalter
CA
Product Manager, Data Modeling

 

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:25 PM

David Bird, a regular columnist for SQLServercentral.com, has written up his list of favourite SQL Server tools that are free or charityware.

We've all done it. Scourer the Internet for a script or free tool to help do our job or solve a problem. SQL Server Central and similar sites contain an abundance of scripts and guides to assist us. There are times when I want to use a tool instead of a collection of scripts and commands. A tool more often than not requires less customization than a script and sometimes less technical know how to get them to work. So I decided to share a list of free tools that I use from time to time.

NVU
To start with I wrote this article using NVU an open source WYSIWYG HTML editor. It creates HTML pages with very simple HTML code. It still adds a few extra commands such as " " but that's nothing compared to what MS Word generates for HTML code.

NVU is open source software and does not require any registration to download or use.

FullSun SQL Server Toolkit
It is a nice tool kit with many helpful features. Currently this tool is for SQL Server 2000 but a 2005 version is being developed.  Here are some of the functions available with this tool:

• List all SQL ids with very easy passwords so they can be fixed.
• Review all the errors or failed logins in the SQL Error Log files.
• Monitor database growth through their backup file sizes along with viewing the current table sizes.
• Check nine predefined performance counters.
• Read a database log file.  (This was primary reason I got this tool. It's nothing fancy but I like it.)

This tool is CharityWare software. Every time the tool is started, a panel pops up in the background with instructions on using the tool and a request for a charitable donation.

Read more of his list at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/dbird/2959.asp . 

Do you have a list of data management related free tools?

 

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 9:09 AM

You'd think that a profession that works with getting consensus on terms and their meanings would be able to figure out how to name our own tools and products...but we aren't.

In my Contentious Issues presentation, I choose to start our debates buy asking questions about Conceptual Data Modeling because I know that there are probably n+1 definitions and understandings about what makes a good CDM...or even what one is. 

Vincent Rainardi at SQLservercentral.com has written an article about one set of confusing terms we use - Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing.  I hadn't really thought about this set, but he's right -- we use these terms to sometimes mean the same thing and sometimes something completely different.

Rainardi writes:

Try asking your colleague what is the difference between business intelligence and a data warehouse. I find that a lot of people, even those who work in BI projects and BI industry, do not understand the difference. A lot of people use these 2 terms interchangeably. Some people even prefer to use 1 term instead of the other because it simply "sounds better". Many people think that business intelligence is not just a data warehouse, but there is more to it. But when asked "what business intelligence systems are not data warehouse systems?" or "what part of business intelligence systems are not data warehouses?", most of them have difficulties explaining the answer.

These days, "business intelligence" is the norm used by most vendors in the industry, rather than "data warehouse". Most of them call / classify their tools as business intelligence software, not data warehouse software. The name of Cognos product is "Cognos 8 Business Intelligence". BusinessObjects label themselves as "BI software company" and "global leader in BI software". The name of one of Hyperion products is "Hyperion System 9 BI+". SAS Enterprise BI Server provides a fully integrated and comprehensive suite of business intelligence software. Microsoft promotes SQL Server 2005 as the end-to-end business intelligence platform. It seems that only Kimball Group who consistently use the term data warehouse. Bill Inmon, as the inventor of this term, also uses the term data warehouse.

Can you see how our business users are driven crazy when we tell them our job is to help them sort out their data and their meanings?

What have you done to clear up some of this confusion in your shop?