enterprise distribution

[Jerry Feldman]

On Friday 18 March 2005 9:29 am, Bill Horne wrote:
> In the 1990's, NYNEX embraced CASE tools in a massive way, and bought
> CASE suites from a company headlined by Fran Tarkinton (the football
> player). The tools and their development were in their infancy, and one
> of my coworkers described them thusly:

> "It's like you go to the Cadillac dealer and they say they'll sell you a
> gold-plated Cadillac, and it has gold-plated wheels and gold-plated
> grill and gold-plated bumpers. Everything gold-plated, except that
> there's no steering wheel. 'It's OK', the dealer tells you, 'we'll have
> the steering wheel soon, and when we get one, it will be gold-plated
> too'".
Fran's company, was called Knowledgeware, I believe and really did not have 
a very good product. 
> Needless to say, the brief love affair between the nation's CIO's and
> CASE tools is now mentioned in the same way people talk about Mars
> missions that went off course: everybody assumed that somebody else was
> looking at the basics.
The HOS approach was a methodology. The product also produced milspec 
documentation. So, a designer could produce and test the design,, and the 
implementor could use the same framework to incorporate the details. 
When done right, you have an implementation that complies with the design. 
The real problem is in practice that systems get relegated down to the lower 
level programmers who like to write code. In a more formal organization, a 
designer might write a document that the programmers might follow. The 
system works when the methodology is followed, but management rarely allows 
systems to be properly thought out and designed. 

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gerald.feldman at hp.com>
Partner Technology Access Center (contractor) (PTAC-MA)
Hewlett-Packard Co.
550 King Street LKG2a-X2
Littleton, Ma. 01460
 (978)506-5243