From: AH

To: Editor

Date: June 18, 2003

 

I would like to nominate the following e-mail received this morning as a suitable 'quote of the week'...

 

To: Information Systems; Policy Performance

Subject: team drive

 

Hi everyone, I have been looking for some files saved in our team drive and it strikes me how messy this drive has become.

 

Sorry to nag, but there are lots of files that have been dumped straight into the team drive, which haven't been put into a folder. There are also lots of files in 'IS' folder of T drive, but again these haven’t been put into any sub-folders.

 

It makes life a lot easier for everyone if all the shared files are organised into some kind of order. Trying to find a file anywhere in the T drive can be a nightmare at the best of times, at the moment its almost impossible with so much dumped at every level.

 

I am asking everyone to take a look at the team drive, and the bits you can see please, and identify files you have saved that could be tidied up.  If it requires more folders to be set up and you don’t have access

to do this, then please let me know.

 

If anyone would like any help with organising their files please give me a call.

 

 

To: AH

From: Fabian Pascal

 

Can you clarify the reason why you deem this a pertinent quote?

 

 

From: AH

To: Fabian Pascal

 

I apologise for my assumptions on the suggested quote I have had to endure this deficiency for years!

 

In retrospect, and as you have pointed out, the quote may not stand up on its own, and thus would not meet the requirements of 'quote of the week'. However for the record, the intention was to highlight the practical issues that would ensue from 'hammering' relational data into a hierarchical model (the file server). The main problem being that each 'file' (document, spreadsheet, image, executable. etc.) is doomed to only one taxonomy category (the physical directory path), which the user has difficulty choosing (hence 'messy' state of the drive), and difficulty locating again ('a nightmare at the best of times') when in most instances multiple categories would be desirable (a many to many relationship), allowing a file to be 'located' by any or a combination of the chosen categories (amongst others).

 

Of course this would necessitate 'logical files' which would be separate from their physical implementation (file server) - a database was recommended years ago, but fell on deaf ears!

 

I suspect that people around the globe are experiencing exactly the same issues, its old news and hardly worthy of a 'quote' - sorry to waste your time.

 

 

To: AH

From: Fabian Pascal

 

What you were trying to convey is too subtle for the average practitioner to figure out--not that it's difficult, but the problem is that he/she is not generally trained to reason and is not formally exposed to [fundamentals such as] the problematics of hierarchies.

 

In fact, most believe that people "think hierarchically" which, even if true in some instances, does not negate the drawbacks when it comes to manipulation and integrity in shared complex hierarchies. In fact, that's in part what our first two DATABASE FOUNDATIONS papers alert to.

 

So I think that it is more appropriate to post this exchange, rather than the quote per se.

 

 

Posted 09/19/03

 

 

 

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