Re: (not entirely...) OT: OPINION... chicken entrails, runic stones, and crystal balls... WAS CoBOL moved to OO

From: Judson McClendon (judmc_at_sunvaley0.com)
Date: 01/02/04 

Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 17:05:41 GMT

"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote:
>
> Sure there's a need to know whether John Doe paid his bill five minutes ago.
> But decision makers also want to know what the total picture was Friday midnight
> - and compare that to the total picture a week earlier. Broad based snapshots
> are useful - even if they are saved in forms other than printed listings.

Good point, Howard. Accounting practices, some of which predate
computers by millennia, and which are not going to be fundamentally
altered by anything we do in IS, dictate such. Accountants (who run the
companies, BTW) want to see accurate and timely reports EXACTLY
in the form they see them now. They may well want them to be online,
but they will never want them to changed in kind. Accounting is even
more conservative than engineering, a comparably ancient profession. 

-- 
Judson McClendon      judmc@sunvaley0.com (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems     http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."