Practical Data for Nonprofits: Part 3 — Why is it so hard to change something in my database?
The technologies that run key parts of most operations — Quickbooks, Salesforce, Apricot, even that custom Filemaker database from an undisclosed number of years ago — are nothing at all like Excel or Google Docs. But because each type of system sits on a computer, it’s really common for folks to expect that one what one can do, the other can do. The tension is between the ways we use consumer tools like Excel that have a single purpose and aren’t tied to anything else, and the ways that systems which are tied to anything else must be designed.
It’s never just a field
Every 23 seconds someone, somewhere, asks for “a new field” to be “added to the database.” Several times per month I am the lucky recipient of such a request. I often wonder about my role in hoarding so much data that if every human who will ever live works frantically until the heat death of the universe we won’t be able to make meaningful use of it all. I also sometimes wonder if we are tearing small holes in the space/time continuum in our race to coerce ever-tinier bits of matter into storing All! The! Photos! of adorable wombats.
But I digress. I want to talk about fields in databases.