Slide 3 of 7
Notes:
- * The person who traditionally keeps the database up to
date sits very low on the totem pole. Usually that’s
not a problem, because the data is published for a small
audience. But when you go global, watch out!
- * As the audience grows, other groups may wish to
piggyback a few additional fields on your database. Or
expand its regional scope. Or add links to other data.
But they rarely accompany their requests with $.
- * If you have more than one search field in the lookup,
users will find a way to misapply search criteria. If you
offer logical OR, they’ll be stymied at the huge
number of seemingly-irrelevant hits. If you use logical
AND, they’ll wonder why they never seem to be able
to find any matching records. If you offer a choice of OR
or AND processing, they’ll be totally mystified. You
may have to staff a HELPLINE just to support your simple
database lookup!
- * The owner of your source worksheet will not be able to
run a mailmerge, save the resulting file as ASCII text,
and FTP the file to their web site. On the other hand,
the IS folks will not support or assist end users with
simple spreadsheets. Although your application may have
global utility, it can easily fall through the cracks.
Then you get stuck doing simple database maintenance for
the rest of your life.
