Bragging Rights

The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

— Albert Einstein

The significant investment we all have made in our systems is ephemeral, but not for the reasons that may be publicly acknowledged.  That is, the architecture we fail to select will become the black hole that all future investments and resources will be poured into, yet the reason that the anti-architecture platform was chosen quickly becomes irrelevant.  How many times have you heard “The business units are the experts.  They can model the domain without the developers.”  Well, good authors may not be the best librarians.

One associate comes to mind when he quotes “We have added over 700 columns to the off-shelf product.  It’s great – I get the screens that I want.”  Little time is spent recollecting the long hours wasted because the database is completely de-normalized.

Agile can fail you here.  If you have put off important architecture decisions regarding the integrity and movement of data in your systems, you are in a precarious spot.  An O/RM will not help you here as there may be performance issues you need to consider first.  Yep, Big Up Front Design stuff.  It will help you out.  Keep it in your ActiveEngine toolkit.