March 6, 2009 at 5:10 pm
GSquared (3/28/2008)
rbarryyoung (3/27/2008)
GSquared (3/27/2008)
Joe creates an order in the Orders table: CreateBy = "Joe"Bob updates the order and changes the price incorrectly: UpdateBy = "Bob"
Sue updates the order and changes the ship date correctly: UpdateBy = "Sue"
The customer backs out of the deal because of the price change, Joe records a $1-million dollar deal went south because of the price being set incorrectly, Sue gets sacked because the database says she's the one who changed the order.
The problem with this scenario is that it describes a situation that has nothing to do with the goals that I was referencing, nor with the goals of any worthwhile organization, IMHO. What is portrayed here is a "Culture of Blame" wherein managers and upper-level employees who are incompetent (Account Managers who are not managing million dollar sales & customers, developers who write apps that allow shipping clerks to change Order prices, a DBA who doesn't understand that later Updates overwrite earlier ones, and managers who fire the wrong people for the wrong reasons and encourage this to continue) spend their time trawling for information to allow them to transfer blame from themselves to lower-level minimum-wage employees. That may be your idea of a productive use of your time and skills, but it's not mine.
Audit fields, as I outlined them support the diagnosis and correction of application and database problems and it is far cheaper than other options. It is does not constitute a comprehensive security scheme (C2 auditing does that), nor guaranteed data recovery (backups do that), nor does it support a culture of blame. I have far better things to do with my time.
No need to be rude.
You know what Gus? You are absolutely right: I was a complete *ss in my reply and there is just no excuse for that and I am truly sorry for how I spoke to you here.
This post of mine has bugged me for almost a year now, but after I decided to apologize for it, I just couldn't find it (kept searching for "Audit"). So I decided to just forget about it and hope that everyone else forgot about it. Unfortunately, *I* could not forget about it, and every time since then that I have seen you replying to help someone else, couldn't help thinking about this post and how inexcusably rude I was.
Then today, after reading how our friend from MSDN behaved, I determined to find this d*mn post no matter how long it took and to apologize for it. I do apologize for it and you can not imagine how much I want to just delete it.
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