The Misapplication of Occam’s Razor or the Principle of Inappropriate Parsimony
The type of design problem under consideration here is particularly intractable because there exists a series of approximate conceptual models of increasing fidelity and complexity. Faced with...
View ArticleA Solution for Managing Timezones, Times, and Dates in International Internet...
The measurement and management of time is something most people give little thought to. But when designing Internet based systems time presentation, manipulation and management can rapidly become a...
View ArticleSoftware Design Reviews – Lessons Learned and Best Practices
I have designed more than a few systems and reviewed the designs for many more. I have tried to incrementally improving my approach to both designing systems and reviewing others designs by developing...
View Article5 Nines and other Nonsense – Interaction of Quality Attributes in System Design
5 Nines is a term used in the computer industry that refers to the 5 nines in 99.999%. This number is about the best odds manufacturers will give that one of their systems will be available at any...
View ArticleThe Mobile Lounges at Dulles International Airport
This was the first US airport designed for jets and so there was no precedent for Saarinen, the airport's architect, to follow. One of the airports most distinctive features was the lack of any...
View ArticleThe Interaction of Business Policy, Strategy, and Architecture in System Design
Understanding how a System Architecture supports it's Business Strategy within the framework of an Enterprise Architecture and how these in turn support Corporate Strategy and ultimately Corporate...
View ArticleThe Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing
L. Peter Deutsch first published the "8 Fallacies of Networking" internally while working at Sun Labs in 1991-92. This is a great list of the kind of wishful thinking that clouds so much system design....
View ArticleRedrawing the Pentagon’s new Map
Dr Thomas P.M. Barnett, a US military Strategist on Globalization and US Foreign Policy, he claims that "disconnectedness defines danger" and that a new map of the connected and disconnected world can...
View ArticleDefining Goals and Objectives for System Development
Clearly expressed, goals and objectives are essential prerequisites for successful change management in complex environments. System design, implementation, and commissioning in the broadest sense are...
View ArticleUsing a Balanced Scorecard to align Enterprise Architecture and System...
The concept of a balanced scorecard was developed by Dr. Robert S. Kaplan of the Harvard Business School, and Dr. David P. Norton, and is explain in their book Translating Strategy into Action. The...
View ArticleThe First Modern Computer – The Case for Baby, the Manchester Mk I Prototype
Finding an authoritative history of the Computer's invention is almost impossible. There are several reasons for this problem but two of the main ones are that people disagree on the meaning of the...
View ArticleThe Moore School Lectures and the British Lead in Stored Program Computer...
In 1946 the British were able to take the lead in computer development from America. The main challenge had become the rapid construction of a machine while solving the one remaining major technical...
View ArticleThe Evolution of Cooperation – Social Software and the Shadow of the Future.
The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod is an outstanding book. First published in 1984 it has increased in significance with the evolution of the Internet. In the book Axelrod examines how...
View ArticleThe Evolution of the Modern Computer. An Open Source Graphical History (1934...
This is the home of the Computer Evolution File. This file attempts to provide a comprehensive graphical representation of the evolution of the modern computer for the period 1934 to 1950. Continue...
View ArticleJudging the likely Success of an Ontology
To analyze the success or failure of ontologies it is necessary to first define the anatomy or architecture of an ontology. By defining the roles and responsibilities of the component parts of an...
View ArticleOntology Review 1. The NHS Common Basic Specification. Why top level...
In the late 1980s it became apparent that the same information management problems were being encountered over and over again in hospital after hospital throughout the UK. The Common Basic...
View ArticleCharles Babbage and Howard Aiken. How the Analytical Engine influenced the...
"There’s my education in computers, right there; this is the whole thing, everything I took out of a book." - Howard Aiken pointing to Charles Babbages's notebook. Continue reading →Charles Babbage and...
View ArticleMovabletype 2.661 Entity Relationship Diagram
I have been experimenting with Python 2.3 and MySQL 4.0.13 recently and have been using a copy of my Movabletype 2.661 database as a sandbox... Continue reading →Movabletype 2.661 Entity Relationship...
View Article
