by Dave McComb | Jul 22, 2014 | Development
Are there hidden problems with default values in software? Virtually all information systems have “default values.” We put them in our systems to make things easier for the end-users as well as the system itself. As we will investigate in this white paper,...
by Dave McComb | Jul 22, 2014 | Development
Relational databases, relational theory, relational calculus, and predicate logic all rely on a two-value truth. That is, that a given proposition or predicate is either true or false. The fact that the results of the query can be proven to be correct rests on the...
by Dave McComb | Jul 22, 2014 | Software Architecture
Somewhere around 200 items seems to be the optimum number of interrelated things we can deal with at one time, when dealing with complex systems such as computer software. In 1956 George Miller wrote an article for the Psychological Review called “The magic number...
by Dave McComb | Jul 22, 2014 | Software Architecture
An Evaluation of Risk Factors in Large Systems Engineering Projects This article was originally published in the Journal of Information Systems Management, Volume 8, Number 1, Winter 1991. It is reprinted here by permission of the publisher: www.crcpress.com System...
by Dave McComb | Jul 22, 2014 | Software Architecture
Why can’t we deploy software as well we did fifty years ago? The way we build and deploy software is deplorable. The success rate of large software projects is well under 50%. Even when successful, the capital cost is hideous. In his famous “Mythical Man...
