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Whenever data is stored in more than one place, these consequences
always result:
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The redundant data
stores attract updates from different classes of users
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Those updates happen
in different sequence, at different points in time, and in different groupings or levels of
aggregation
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Neither data store
is ever correct.
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Time is wasted
confirming one against the other
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Costs arise due to
business errors based on wrong information (overdrafts,
credit/collection errors, etc.)
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Systems are
developed to address the problems, by automating the checking
and comparison of the two lists, or to post all changes to both
lists, or force the two organizations to work the same way, etc.
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Those secondary
systems introduce rigidity and problems throughout the software
environment.
These costs and
consequences are geometric in nature, and are the root of our
current employment of tens of millions of clerical workers, each
operating completely isolated accounting systems.
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