Re: Normalization was Left AS/400 and Returned -- MIDRANGE-L

After all the prev stuff about Comair, and disasters, and inflexible
software,
if I was designing from scratch I would want maximum flxibility.
Business rules change (which (if designed well) can be handled by user data
changes and not code changes).
External events cause change.
A calendar of open / close of warehouses....
(these are from real experiences with a nationwide retailer with many
warehouses)
Snow days, Midnight sale days (and the warehouse stays open),
Hurricane Andrew flattens a warehouse (it didn't open for a while...and when
it
did the "racks" were trailers in the parking lot)
Blue laws about Sunday (and laws changing),
Union rules change & now different holidays..
The manager just decides that tomorrow we count all the racks...
and every warehouse can be different than another.
You work in Indiana where they may be changing daylight savings rules soon.
Management buys 2 new warehouses and closes 3 others.
When a user or manager insists they will "never" change something - that's a
sure sign they will.
jim
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Rich" <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 5:44 PM
Subject: RE: Normalization was Left AS/400 and Returned


> On Wed, 4 May 2005, Fisher, Don wrote:
>
> > A good approach as far as it goes.  I've found that coding rules like
that
> > makes sense only when one allows for exceptions.  The general rule is
there
> > are always exceptions.  You may be fortunate enough to work in a place
> > without exceptions, which would be the exception to prove the rule, yes?
>
> :)  In the general case you are right on the money: there are always
> exceptions.  In this specific case so far there haven't been.  When
> exceptions are required, the first question I always ask myself is:  why?
> What are the circumstances that lead to this exception?  Can those be
> coded for?
>
> Something I've been thinking about (but not yet coded) is "pluggable
> rules".  While I think this is fairly common in other programming I've
> never seen something similar in RPG.
>
> > <clip>
> > Neither.  I'd find out what the rules are for when it is open/closed and
> > code those rules.  No file/table needed.  In fact, I've already done
this.
> > <clip>
>
> James Rich
>
> It's not the software that's free; it's you.
>   - billyskank on Groklaw
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