[vox-tech] collaborative data storage (of excel files)

[Brian Lavender]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 01:56:38PM -0800, Bryan Richter wrote:
> On Jan 16, 2008 1:30 PM, Dylan Beaudette <dylan.beaudette at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > They work exclusively with Excel.
> >
> > A discussion about this problem with my sig. other last night resulted in
> > mutual distrust of the way most people in academics and "professional"
> > circles are handling data. There really should be a 'data management' course
> > which is either part of the Technical Writing courses (which are required) or
> > taught as a single quarter class. Everyone who is not in computer science or
> > mathematics should be required to either test out of the course or take it.
> >
> 
> No joke!
> 
> A friend of mine (anonymized as 'Sue' for good measure) worked for a
> project where she was the only person with any computer science
> experience. She was also the least-degreed member, with a B.S. This
> project was in a government lab and she was responsible for parsing
> data coming back from a satellite and storing it for later retrieval.
> The big cheese couldn't understand that they needed a database
> application! We're talking terabytes of data over the life of the
> project, and they're trying to get Sue to whip something together all
> by herself because of their complete unfamiliarity with the concept.
> 
> It's rather widespread, though. Being relatively inexperienced, Sue
> had to be convinced of the need for a database, herself. And I myself
> only had the knowledge to suggest it from working at a LAMP shop. I
> certainly experienced data loss and frustrating file usage
> (test_results_bryan_new.really_new, anyone?) in my physics classes,
> but we never discussed version control or databases.
> 
> (And for some unknown reason, taking a class in databases always
> sounded really boring to me. :) Now, most of what I do is writing SQL,
> and I love it...)

I am a grad student at Sac State and I see a lot of CS majors
complaining about having to take physics, etc, but I think your post
clearly justifies the need to take courses in outlying areas. 

brian
-- 
Brian Lavender
http://www.brie.com/brian/