Like A Box of Chocolates

One of the wags on our team has characterized the new system as "Gumped." He says that the database is like a box of chocolates because you never know what you are gonna get (when you compose an sql query).

Clearly, the architects of this database were recruited from a madhouse. Virtually none of the database design team speaks English without a pronounced accent. If you talk about business rules, they adopt an expressionless demeaner and firmly insist on telling you how the system process the data with a strong implication that you are wasting their time with your silly questions. Eventually, they give in and research your question. At least half the time they end-up changing something in the code. Hah.

I am reading a lot of copy that sings praises to Oracle for trying to consolidate all the competition by buying them. Smart move, I guess. The pundits must know.

All I know is that the Oracle ERP applications are a rat's nest of 5th normal form database design. Theoretically elegant; yet it practice - unusable. The relationships in this database are a puzzle that no one I know has solved. No one can produce an up-to-date Data model that shows how things actually work together. We actually have to reverse engineer the data to come up with a working data dictionary.

I am convinced that the whole ERP industry is nothing more than a huge lobby. They don't manufacture software, they bribe, then intimidate CIO's to get on board with these expensive systems that don't do half of what the systems they are replacing do. How do they get away with it? These young folks seem smart, but unfortunately they have never seen how efficient and usable the pre-ERP world was.

So what if I sound like an old fart. No one listened to me when I was a young fart either. No one wants to hear that the Emperor is wearing only a smile, and lordy no one wants to be the one to tell him.