RE: What's that line again about 'best practices'?
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 22:08:29 +0000
Message-ID: <CO1PR19MB4984316A5B96B6762CF166679B339_at_CO1PR19MB4984.namprd19.prod.outlook.com>
Wise words from MWF.
The problem I have with “best practices” is that they are typically only “best” within some rather narrow set of constraints, which often includes time.
Many moons ago, before such things as Index Organized Tables, and in fact using a database other than Oracle, a shop I was in had “best practices” that “all tables must be indexed” and “wherever possible, all access to tables must be via an index”. Some wunderkind took that so far as to write “access wrappers” for all tables and mandated that “all access must use the wrappers”. We had a really small lookup table (under 100 rows), something around work centers, as I recall, that was the most frequently accessed table in the shop. Needless to say, performance problems around that table were rampant. I was a “hero” for 10 minutes when I replaced a process that called the access routine several thousand times with a “direct read” of the table. When wunderkind found out, I was the goat. I was a GS-3, he was a GS-13, and performance was sacrificed on the altar of conformance.
There’s a term in medicine that I think might be appropriate:
“Standard of care”
Of course, there’s the age old “excuse”, “It seemed like a good idea at the time”
And ANY “standard”, or “best practice” or “usual practice” or WHATEVER you want to name it, needs some sort of documented EXCEPTION process, the rigor of which is commensurate with the possible harm that could be caused by not complying with said standard.
Clay
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> On Behalf Of Mark W. Farnham
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2022 2:22 PM
To: christopherdtaylor1994_at_gmail.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RE: What's that line again about 'best practices'?
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James Morle suggested something along the lines that they should be renamed Usual Practices (or something like that). I’ve called them Standard Minimum Starting Points and I pointed out that the only best practice I know of is to not allow things to be called best practices. Calling something a “best practice” tends to stifle attempts to do better.
IF you can get something called a best practice into your service delivery standards and you implement that practice, you have a legal defense whether or not the users can do anything or not.
Nothing can be proven to be a best practice. Things called best practice are sometimes really just good enough to be acceptable.
You’ve probably caught the drift I believe “best practice” is a harmful term. Some things called “best practices” are really quite good initial starting points or usual practices that are just fine unless you need something better.
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org<mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Chris Taylor
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2022 1:59 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org<mailto:oracle-l_at_freelists.org>
Subject: OT: What's that line again about 'best practices'?
Mark or someone has an idiom I want to save this time....
Something about best practices being written by people who don't have to support them or something .....
Chris
Or the corresponding Tort law term
“Duty of care”
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Received on Fri Oct 28 2022 - 00:08:29 CEST