The first thing to recognize is that health care itself needs rethinking. The lack of a patient focus is so pervasive that it even finds its way into the database structures as illustrated in the following real example. We are…
Clients vs. customers – via Seth Godin
I start my day reading Seth Godin’s blog, every day, for maybe two years now. His posts are short and often they are obvious truths. But I read them long enough that they got me to fear less, deliver more, and…
Tagged with: clients, Commercial off-the-shelf, requirements, web application development
Posted in About Dulcian, BLOG, Consulting, Development, Products
Posted in About Dulcian, BLOG, Consulting, Development, Products
Preparing for User Acceptance Testing
One of the things that can make user acceptance testing go horribly wrong is that the users have no idea what they are supposed to be doing. They do not know how to use the system. They do not know…
Tagged with: Project Management, template, testing, user acceptance testing, User interface, web application development
Posted in BLOG, Clients, Consulting, Development
Posted in BLOG, Clients, Consulting, Development
The Evolution of a Project into a Product
I suspect that most software products have their origins as a project. We are seeing the birth of such a product so I thought I would blog about it. Earlier I wrote a couple of posts about our next generation…
Tagged with: code generator, medical history, survey, web application development
Posted in BLOG, Consulting, Development
Posted in BLOG, Consulting, Development
The BEST IT Project Management Book Ever is: “If Disney Ran Your Hospital”
If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 1/2 Things you Would Do Differently (Fred Lee, 2004, Second River Healthcare) is not even an IT book. As the title suggests, it is about hospital administration. But no book has influenced my thinking about project…
Tagged with: customer satisfaction, Oracle, Project Management, Web service
Posted in About Dulcian, BLOG, Consulting, Other
Posted in About Dulcian, BLOG, Consulting, Other
Systems Analyst Techniques for Interviewing Users
About a million years ago, I wrote my doctoral dissertation about how to talk to computer system users. I videotaped 50 systems analysts talking to 50 different real estate brokers discussing the requirements for a system. I did formal protocol…
Tagged with: Business rule, requirements, Software development process, system analyst
Posted in BLOG, Consulting, Development
Posted in BLOG, Consulting, Development
The Challenge of Converting Oracle Forms to ADF (or other J2EE)
“How do I convert my Oracle Forms applications to…?” I have been getting this kind of question ever since JDeveloper 3.0 was released. As soon as BC4J (now ADF BC) was created, we started seeing the handwriting on the wall.…
Tagged with: ADF, Forms converter, Formspider, Java EE, Oracle Forms, PL/SQL
Posted in BLOG, Consulting, Development, Products
Posted in BLOG, Consulting, Development, Products
Case Study: “The Object Interaction Repository”
Dulcian was building the recruiting system for the United States Air Force Reserve. Most of the core user interface screens needed to be images of the paper forms that applicants fill out as part of enlisting in the Air Force.…
Tagged with: case study, code generator, Database design, Extract transform load, XML
Posted in BLOG, Clients, Consulting, Development, Products
Posted in BLOG, Clients, Consulting, Development, Products
What is the role of the database in web architecture?
Many web developers think that the answer to this question is: “As a useless artifact fit for a museum”. Probably the most common perspective among JavaEE developers is: “As a place to store persistent copies of our classes”. Organizations having a…
Even if a Generic Rules Engine does not exist, that doesn’t mean you have to hand code!
If your system includes a big, odd calculation, you should think really hard prior to hand coding it. If there are a hundred rules or more and they fall into some kind of nice pattern, you can probably create a custom…
Tagged with: Business rules engine, code generator, Software repository, User interface
Posted in BLOG, Clients, Consulting, Development, Products
Posted in BLOG, Clients, Consulting, Development, Products
