geordee

The Database and The Userbase

In the Internet world there are only two valuable assets - the database and the userbase. And both are hard to acquire. Recently, we have been struggling to create formidable databases in certain domains, and the cost to build and maintain those are pretty high. Even with the sophistication of technology that are practically available and reachable, applied on freely available - “public domain” - data, I am hardly satisfied with the quality of results (I being the perfectionist part of me).

A few recent acquisitions by Google and similar companies underline this even more - two or three “red”...

Only One Miracle At A Time

Over-engineering is something every designer, every architect should be beware about. In the essay The Second-system Effect, Frederick Brooks points out one common pitfall - when the architect designs his second system, it is the most dangerous system he will design, because he will try to incorporate everything that he missed in the first system. I have observed this to be very true in many occasions. Over a period, architects get out of this. Slowly they tend to build balanced, and mostly conservative systems as they age in the profession.

I use a principle while building systems - Information Technology...

It's The Data, Stupid!

We started our efforts to build software products a few months back. Soon we churned out some small applications, as part of our training program. The product is a small library management system, built on Ruby on Rails, the open source way. Soon we started getting enquiries, from big and small libraries who are on the way to computerization.

The product’s evolution is from a training program. It boasts nothing that refers to Z39.50, MARC-21 or anything related to libraries. In fact, the key concept around which the product was rental inventory management, making it customizable to track a generic...

Single Version Of The Truth?

One of the often-quoted phrase, almost a cliche, in Information Management space is single version of the truth. In the past I have quoted to justify or sell master data management and enterprise data warehousing solutions. Off late, I have started looking objectively on the business necessities of single version of truth. Partly, this is due to the observation that not all business scenarios require a single version of the truth.

Is it because the IT systems or databases are unreliable or incapable of defining the truth or facts? No. It is due to many different reasons. While the truth...

Pen and Paper

I am one person who embraces digital world wholeheartedly. Three years back I made a decision to stop buying paper books and to move to Kindle. I hardly remember any occasion of buying a paper book after that. Since digital music distribution improved in India, I have stopped buying music CDs. All my paper documents are digitised and stored electronically even in cloud (knowing how secure the digital security can be, I passively trust digital storage and internet).

But now I have discovered, or rediscovered, a passion of pen and paper. The beauty of pen and paper is that it...

Beat The System

As any social organisation evolves the tendency is to build systems that will further aid development and progress. The social organisation may be anything ranging from a country, a religion, a city, a company, a small project or even the internet. The systems, traditional processes, machines and automation works on repeatable activities making them more reliable, acceptable and predictable. In some cases the systems are enforced using policies, rules and restrictions and in other cases it is just recommended using values, guidelines or rituals.

On the other hand, building systems also creates a counter-tendency to “beat the system”. This is...

Rethinking Business Intelligence

The only constant is change is ever so true with Information Technology. IT systems and solutions are created in the context of the evolutionary period in IT resources. From a number of implementations we derive technical know-how, patterns, best practices, and wisdom. Sometimes the evolutionary cycles take us to newer possibilities that invalidate the current common wisdom. So is with business intelligence.

It has been almost two years since I wrote the demise and restoration of data warehousing. The brave new world is now established.

Business Intelligence aided by data warehousing...

Crossing the Golden Gate

I have been playing around with GoldenGate for a few months now. The more challenges I face, the more I like the features and capabilities of this tool. Except for a few bugs introduced in the recent versions (typical in the Oracle products I have worked on), GoldenGate proved a solid replication and changed data capture tool. Now, “solid” should not be understood as rigid; GoldenGate is quite flexible in the way it can be configured.

One of the challenges we had is to extract data with minimal burden to the source databases (in Oracle). The source database was configured...

Wabi Sabi

The Japanese world view of wabi-sabi is quite powerful. It allows us to accept imperfections, even better, to be open about imperfections. Whether it be sin, mortality or suffering imperfection is part of this world. Hardly anything man-made is perfect. Interestingly enough, I was browsing through the internet for some good chef’s knives for my wife. I found Japanese knives to be highly rated, but not as attractive as the German ones. May be my naivety, but what struck me immediately is the form and aesthetics that follows function.

I look at my creations, the stuff that I build at my...

Two Birds in the Hand...

Rarely I record thoughts or feelings that may change over time. I hardly write about a product or company. But this time, I feel compelled to write about Google and the way the Google way of getting things wrong. I just finished reading an article on The Atlantic confirmed my thoughts.

I use most of Google’s services pretty well, and my all-time favorite is Google Reader. I still wonder why there is no serious competition to Google Reader. Especially the way Google Reader clients are built on many platforms. But with Google+,...