Normalisation and new System Purchase.

[Lightwave]

Just a simple question

How many organisations do you think buy systems without ever asking for an underlying view of the table structure of the target application...?

My personal opinion very high.

Madness????
Its come up because we are potentially buying a new system and nobody has raised this yet. (I'm raising it now)

 

[gemma-the-husky]

loads, I would think - they buy on demonstrated functionality, and maybe also on price.

i was trying to interface to a commercial accounts system recently

it had a single NL/SL/PL transaction table.
Cetain code(s) determined what the transaction type was.
Every posting was recorded as a positive value - so you have to take into account both the ledger and the type of posting to determine whether it should be treated as plus or minus.

ie a SL invoice needed to be treated as a minus, (for NL/Accounts purposes) - but a SL credit needs to be a plus.

Horrible - but most users would never see this - it only became an issue because they wanted some extra functionality that wasn't part of the package.

 

[Lightwave]

Don't you think that is boardering on incompetent?

I suppose there is the point that I buy computers without completely understanding Quantum Mechanics but....

 

[Rabbie]

Just a simple question

How many organisations do you think buy systems without ever asking for an underlying view of the table structure of the target application...?

My personal opinion very high.

Madness????
Its come up because we are potentially buying a new system and nobody has raised this yet. (I'm raising it now)

Possibly because they don't have the technical expertise to judge the quality of the design. AS long as it looks nice and does what they want then they don't care about the internal workings.

 

[jdraw]

And possibly because the final decision maker has been wined and dined by some of the best marketers out there.