Data Use and Checks
Some feedback from SSWUG Readers on this – good commentary – and ideas. I really do think that making proper use (whatever that is) of data is going to redefine what we do as DBAs. [Send in your comments here]
Robert: "Information vs Data.
Tree View Controls – that is the answer.
Those who master the Treeview Control can dramatically enhance the usability and reliability of any application – windows or web.
Users typically have more data then they can consume, yet they think they do not have enough because they do not know how to mine it.
Displaying their data in hierarchical format from any possible perspective gets them what they want in a human friendly environment. We can use treeview controls to navigate data, or to graphically build a where clause to act on data.
Some vendors want us to think that we need their expensive tools for warehousing, OLAP, mining and hierarchal drill-down capabilities in order to navigate and filter our data. But these controls add some much complexity to the development, distribution and use, that they sometimes yield the wrong solution. I have seen countless hours and money spent implementing these tools to the end users, when all they really needed was simple, free, treeview control.
Treeview controls are the best way to navigate-through and filter-on data. We simply have to build them with the ability to drill into data from multiple perspectives, such as by Region, by Sales person, by products, and by Vendor.
While these treeview controls can be embedded in traditional Win Form applications, they provide the most dramatic appeal to web pages. A properly built treeview control can be built once and used in both places."
I can certainly see the point, but I think too that someone has to define what those tree views contain – what are the cut points for the nodes on the tree? I can also see many places where a tree view isn’t going to necessarily give the information needed – reports, etc.
BUT, that said, tree views do often solve the information browsing requirements.
Ed: "Just be glad the mistake was with your vacation trip; recoverable. Versus a medical procedure that was deadly."
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