For whatever reason, my IT life started and continues to this day looking at the world of data. Some of my friends were lucky. They got to make Blue buttons Pink. Or made things that danced around the screen. Or became immersed in the issues of system integration. Or even became captains of industry.
Not me. It's been data. And, sadly, I have never been able to work too much with getting data "in." I have been very involved with getting data "out." Or, more accurately, getting "information" out. And I really think that is what is wrong with this industry. We spend about 10 seconds thinking about getting information in! We may spend about 20 seconds thinking about how to store that information. Then we spend a HUGE amount of time trying to make sense of what we have. And most of the industry does not see the issue (at least it seems that way to me.)
Case in point ... I got to clock even more hours on a topic that has become very, very boring for me. "Who should get the sales credit for a particular Order?" Underneath this, is the question, "What Territory did that Order belong to?" and, underneath that, "What is a Territory."
You see, in a simple case, it is not enough to say that a major company, like McDonalds, bought the order and "Fred" get's the McDonalds orders ... so Fred get's the Sales Credit. You see, was it McDonalds or McDonalds, inc? Or Chipotle? Was that McDonalds in the US? in GB? Does Fred get this even though "Sue" get's credit for all Restaurant orders placed in the "Tri-State" area that are businesses with Blue Logos that begin with the letter "P" and have a silent "Q!"
And it's not like I have been having these conversations for YEARS. Oh wait ... I have!
Anyway, needless to say, the business "logic" is complex. And if even Oracle is having issues with this, how much more challenging this must be for smaller companies. (Although Oracle does actually have a solution (Fusion). It is just not going to be set up easily for our little Low-Profit/High Activity Line of Business!)
Axiom : There has to be much more thought into what kind of information you want OUT of a system before you think about what kind of data you want IN a system and then the structure of the data once INSIDE the system. (And, of course, Big Data actually runs contrary to this! Perhaps revealing that I am becoming a fossil!)
