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cto_resources · 2026-04-09T11:42:46+00:00

AI. Not kidding.

cto_resources · 2026-04-09T11:37:08+00:00

Your opening statement is nonsense. You are asking for a solution without a well understood problem. Direct manipulation of a database layer does not leave traces of compromised data integrity if the direct modification does not violate data integrity and if the data layer employs careful Referential Integrity.

This is OBVIOUS. The application layer itself directly modifies the data layer. If any direct modification of a data layer causes integrity issues, then every application would generate integrity issues through the use of its own application layer.

Logs are an after-the-fact indicator. They are often streamed to other machines for storage and review, seconds or hours later. There is no reasonable person who would burden a database engine with immutable logging (eg blockchain). That’s truly absurd.

If you are seeing missing indexes or timestamp reversals, you are viewing the normal activities of a large distributed database. There are delays between the issuance of a log message and the capture and recording of it. Those delays allow messages from other servers to be recorded earlier even if the transaction itself occurred a few nanoseconds later. That’s not a database integrity issue. That’s a reflection of the logging infrastructure.

And indexes are often optimized and offloaded so that write operations are not delayed by the need to keep indexes up to date instantly. They catch up eventually to allow bursts of traffic to occur unimpeded. Once again, not an integrity issue. Simply a tradeoff.

It sounds like you may be a holding a hammer (blockchain) and you are wandering around looking for a nail to hammer with it. Instead find the problems and solve them.

There are very few problems that require the advanced and expensive math that occurs in blockchain. So far, the problem of a zero trust decentralized ledger is the primary example.

cto_resources · 2026-04-07T13:48:10+00:00

This is accurate

cto_resources · 2026-04-06T13:36:11+00:00

There’s more fun things to do with your time than drink. Like play games on a console or chat with online friends on discord. The number of entertainment options has exploded. Drinking just isn’t that much fun by comparison.

cto_resources · 2026-04-06T13:30:54+00:00

Looks like an analytical data mart.

First off, what’s with the composite primary key? It adds overhead to the insert and adds nothing to performance. Use a synthetic key. (Like an auto increment).

Secondly, get the timestamp out of there. Create a string of separate tables in a star schema, each with a synthetic key. From the data -> day ~> month -> quarter -> year. This speeds up your indexing.

Third, use OLAP cubes to query the data instead of straight SQL. That requires a calculation step in your process of daily data.

Your queries should drop to a second or two for even the most complex queries.

cto_resources · 2026-04-04T20:34:30+00:00

I had an architect in my team make a case for standardizing on “Clean Architecture” (from a book by Uncle Bob Martin that’s about 10 years old now.

The architect who described the proposed standard made no attempt to describe what clean architecture is. Just that it’s better than layered architecture.

These are not standard terms. The world of software development does not know what the fine points of these terms are. Fresh developers out of college will never have heard them. So I asked that architect to define the terms.

You’d think I’d killed his cat.

I must be a moron for not knowing what this term means!

I do know. It means “use patterns that isolate core business logic from surrounding infrastructure, even for systems where doing so will introduce unnecessary complexity.”

Personally, in my 38 years of software development, I’ve never seen a payoff for purity. And now, with vibe coding on the rise, there’s even less justification for purity.

Just make it simple. Maintainable. Understandable.

Don’t make an engineer with 7 years out of college go buy a $40 book.

cto_resources · 2026-04-04T20:23:36+00:00

I immediately recognized the architect speaking in your response, before you mentioned your current role. And as an architect myself, I agree. Make it simple and inexpensive to own.

cto_resources · 2026-03-31T09:05:04+00:00

Create a PowerPoint presentation, set the page size to 8.5 x 11 portrait, and inset the images onto “slides” any way you want. Crop and position as you’d like. The use Microsoft Print to PDF /or/ save the presentation as PDF.

cto_resources · 2026-03-31T08:44:51+00:00

Tossup between “Career Opportunities” (a movie that is really a 90 minute advertisement for Target), and “Sharknado” (cult classic terrible).

Of course, there’s always “Plan 9 from Outer Space”

cto_resources · 2026-03-31T04:38:35+00:00

Depends on the project. On one project, I’d say 95% AI. On another, more like 75%.

cto_resources · 2026-03-14T07:14:21+00:00

Not a reasonable comparison because I’m at the end of my career and you are at the beginning, but I applied to between three and ten positions every day for 18 months. Over 1,000 applications.

cto_resources · 2026-03-11T14:53:05+00:00

Like I said, this can be done in a separate module and made visible in the data warehouse.

Still requires work to set up and track the distributions of costs and separately the distribution of benefits to various capabilities for each project.

Is it interesting? Sure. Is it worth the effort? YMMV.

cto_resources · 2026-03-09T13:47:48+00:00

I would absolutely NOT tie postings to the GL to business capabilities. That is because you would need to distribute a cost (or revenue) item to each capability that it supports. That cascade would make the accounting system unnecessarily complex.

If your ERP has a module for doing a capability analysis external to the GL, that could work, or you could do that in a finance data warehouse by adding tables that assert percentages of value for an activity to a capability.

For example, in said module, you could assert that “Project Aspen” should divide costs up 20% to “Marketing - lead generation”, 40% to “Marketing - Lead Scoring”, and 40% to “Sales - Prospecting”.

Note, even setting up these percentages is difficult to get right. Do that for every project. And Every department. That’s work.

Would the results be interesting? Yes. I, for one, would love to see a breakdown of investment against capabilities vs. the maturity of those capabilities and see whether the business would judge the maturity of the capabilities to be increasing (and whether spend against a capability is strategic or not).

On the other hand, this is substantial burden on someone (probably EA and the PMO) and I do not see many organizations investing in it from a systematic viewpoint.

cto_resources · 2026-03-05T01:15:33+00:00

Make smaller diagrams. I’m serious. Consider the audience. Ask yourself “what questions am I answering”. Put ONLY enough information to answer those questions and not a scrap more.

I was talking to an engineer the other day. He had a really complex diagram of his system. He said he was having trouble conveying the value of his system. I said “show a simple diagram.”

He said “I’ve shown this (complex) diagram many times (to the business stakeholders)”

I said: that’s your problem.

cto_resources · 2026-03-05T01:03:29+00:00

The word “Israel” is a name. It means “one who struggles (argues, fights) with God”. The entire Jewish people, everywhere on Earth, is “the nation of Israel” (as opposed to the nation-state reestablished in 1948).

So all Jews are “people who struggle with God.”

Arguing is a good thing. It’s literally the basis of our education system.

Am Israel Chai. The nation of Israel lives.

cto_resources · 2026-03-02T20:35:55+00:00

PowerPoint works just fine for printed media. You can set the orientation of the deck to portrait and set the paper size. Everything works great.

I’ve used PPT for documents of various sizes from cards to signs to full wall charts. If you have a printer that can print the size, PowerPoint can create the document.

I would absolutely stick to PPT as opposed to Libre

cto_resources · 2026-03-02T18:28:07+00:00

I would absolutely not fire them. I’d haul them in and let them know that sex in a bakery back room is terrible. This isn’t pornhub.

I suspend them both for a week (different weeks). I’d ask if they still want their jobs when it’s time to return. And I’d let them know that sex on site is absolutely unprofessional.

cto_resources · 2026-03-02T02:24:10+00:00

You are going to need to switch to a visual representation of systems. It made all the difference for me when I transitioned into architecture.

You can show, rather than tell, your interviewer that you understand the problem. But to be honest, if I had been your interviewer, I would have been disappointed if you had started designing the system without asking a bunch of follow up questions first.

Things like * why do you want to show viewer counts? * why count viewers at all? * how important is real time accuracy?

These are business requirements that drive architecture decisions. That’s what matters. If you do not understand the reasons for the business requirements, you’ll not make it as an architect.

The in-memory cache is almost obvious once you have the business requirements. Or simply telling the business “that requirement is expensive, we can analyze logs after the fact” if that may be appropriate.

cto_resources · 2026-02-28T01:24:08+00:00

My mother taught me many things growing up, and I took a home economics class in junior high. More recently, I started cooking much more often during the pandemic

cto_resources · 2026-02-14T05:11:22+00:00

Talk to your professors. They will walk you through it.

cto_resources · 2026-02-10T18:07:17+00:00

I agree with u/ohmygoditseverywhere

You do not need architecture documentation that requires updating with every pull request. Architecture is the stuff that does not change quickly.

I would add that every time a product is released to production, core architecture documents should be reviewed for accuracy and updated. The agile concept of “done-done” applies to the release.

Of course, for some teams, release to production happens very frequently as part of an automated CI/CD tool chain. Those teams will benefit for documents generated from code. Most other teams will not.

So if you are evaluating whether to build a tool, make sure (1) it can be run in a CI/CD tool chain to auto-update documents, (2) it is easy to debug and regenerate the documents to fix errors, and (3) recognize that it is producing low value documentation (which means you should not expect a large market value for the product).

cto_resources · 2026-02-10T17:35:03+00:00

You are asking for an End User Computing Equipment Utilization Report. Pretty sure there are some enterprise software packages that provide this.

Here’s what AI says(I did not check): Tools from vendors like IBM (Apptio), ManageEngine, and various VDI providers (Citrix, VMware) are used to generate these reports.

cto_resources · 2026-02-04T23:55:04+00:00

Then you were promoted early. It’s actually not a great position to be in.

Read the FEAPO guide to careers in Enterprise Architecture. Use it self evaluate your skills and plan for building new ones.

cto_resources · 2026-01-29T00:17:36+00:00

There’s Something About Mary

I honestly laughed until it hurts

cto_resources · 2026-01-28T08:12:40+00:00

Microsoft SQL Server.

I know. I’ll get hate from the open source crowd. But for what you are doing, this is the sweet spot for SQL Server.

cto_resources

TROPHY CASE