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

From: Donald Tees (donald_tees_at_nospam.sympatico.ca)
Date: 01/02/04 

Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 12:36:44 -0500

Judson McClendon wrote:
> "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.

Nor are they interested in "real time". They are interested in
conglomerate figures gathered into fiscal periods. Why would anybody do
something like year end tax statements one transaction at a time, or be
interested in a financial positions on a minute by minute basis 20
minutes before midnight on new-year's eve?

Donald

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