> -----Original Message-----
> From: scott.marlowe [mailto:scott.marlowe@ihs.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 4:33 PM
> To: Dustin Sallings
> Cc: Neil Conway; PostgreSQL Hackers
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Are we losing momentum?
> 
> 
> On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Dustin Sallings wrote:
> 
> > Around 11:17 on Apr 22, 2003, scott.marlowe said:
> > 
> > # I'm talking more about a setup like what we have here at work.  A 
> > dozen or # fewer Unix/Linux geeks running the postgresql 
> boxes via ssh 
> > with psql who # know SQL and prefer a command line, and 
> about three or 
> > four dozen # sales and marketing folks who use Windows 
> programs that 
> > access the # database through ODBC.
> > 
> > 	OK, now I know this is fictional.  You don't send 
> people (much less 
> > sales and marketing) querying a database without an 
> understanding of 
> > the data model.  There's no command that can be added to the DB to 
> > change this.
> 
> Hey, stop being an ass and accusing me of lying.  Just 
> because in your 
> perfect world you never have to deal with random events and 
> the corporate 
> insanity some of the others of us do is not reason to call 
> someone a liar.
> 
> I'm not arguing this with you.  I will tell you that I hear 
> it over and 
> over from my users that Postgresql is hard to use, and this 
> is one of the 
> areas they find hard.  You don't care, fine, don't care.  
> Just have enough 
> courteousy to assume that other people may actually live in a 
> slightly 
> different world than yours, and aren't necessarily liars just 
> because they 
> get stuck doing things differently than you.

One of the major reasons for reporting servers is that people who do not
understand the data (or even SQL very well) will often cause great
problems in ad-hoc query situations.

Those performing the queries typically do not understand the data very
well.  This is especially true in a database with hundreds or thousands
of tables.  Usually, they will have a pretty good understanding of a
small subset of the tables that contain the information that they are
after, but even that is not always true.


Tue, 22 Apr 2003 16:45:54 -0700
"Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
Re: Are we losing momentum?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
> One of the major reasons for reporting servers is that people who do not
> understand the data (or even SQL very well) will often cause great
> problems in ad-hoc query situations.
>
> Those performing the queries typically do not understand the data very
> well.  This is especially true in a database with hundreds or thousands
> of tables.  Usually, they will have a pretty good understanding of a
> small subset of the tables that contain the information that they are
> after, but even that is not always true.
>

*nod*

This is something to be addressed by policy rather than technology, I
suspect. One large and famous financial institution I worked at had a simple
policy regarding production DBs: all client access was to be through stored
procedures. This was enforced by the DB's own privileges system - only the
SPs were visible, and they could only be installed by the database group.
This also forced the developers to abstract the DB access into a separate
layer, so that when it was productised only that layer needed to be changed
(this is a Good Thing (tm)).

andrew


Wed, 23 Apr 2003 00:40:58 -0400
"Andrew Dunstan" <andrew@dunslane.net>
Re: Are we losing momentum?