Posted by RickW on 03/08/06 23:15

David Portas wrote: My argument is that for it to work the users must
be aware of what ordering exsits in the view and must take account of
that when designing their queries. So in my opinion there is no
usability benefit to be had from an ordered view other than saving the
time it takes to type in the column names.

Some of the back-and-forth in this thread stems from a difference in
what is meant by users. From where I sit, users do not design queries.
In your sense, I am the user, the only user. I will always know what
columns are available.

Since I design the views and also consume them in my application front
end, there is usability benefit to be had in knowing that I have a
single, ordered source of a particular kind of data on the server, and
that I do not have to re-create the SQL for that anywhere in the
application, not even as a constant or in a config file.

I haven't disagreed with the definition-driven arguments, insofar as
I've understood them. I only disagree with the idea that, when building
a tool, such a definition is the only factor to consider. Especially a
definition that takes no notice of a major reason for collecting and
presenting data: to show an application user something in a certain
order.


Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was
killed by an ugly fact. -- Thomas Huxley

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