Databases:Databases operate in two dimensions mimicking the 'row/column' limitations inherent to pencil and paper. Unfortunately, information functions in four dimensions, not two. 'Row' and 'column,' describe how data is organized to fit media, not what it tells us about the real world. By organizing data to fit media we fail to organize information to fit the real world. We fit the problem to the foregone solution and never really understand the problem.
There is no denying we get valuable results by using databases. In a sense this is the bad news. If we didn't get some benefit from them we probably would have done a better job of solving information problems instead of repeating them with databases. What gets overlooked is that databases render certain kinds of information somewhere between difficult to impossible to obtain. One of the primary reasons we are compelled to program systems is to overcome the informational deficiencies inherent to databases.
For conventional IT, however, we rigorously adhere to the false criteria of databases. How well we use inherently deficient databases is a higher priority than how well we use information. Building special purpose systems using database tools guarantees information failure.
Spreadsheets:Spreadsheets suffer all the same problems as databases. But the real curiosity of spreadsheets is why we even have them. Spreadsheets are a symptom of information management failure ... not the spreadsheet result, but the spreadsheet process. Spreadsheeting is what we do when we need results from information that cannot be provided by the "system" that manages it. Often that's a computer system. The information passes through or is housed by a computer but is not usefully available within that system to produce the result we have turned to a spreadsheet to provide. When information is managed to its full potential the results we use spreadsheets to obtain are directly available from the management system without going through the spreadsheet process.
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