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”
Or the corresponding Tort law term
“Duty 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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf
Of Mark W. Farnham
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2022 2:22 PM
To: christopherdtaylor1994@xxxxxxxxx; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris Taylor
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2022 1:59 PM
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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
