The 11th Fallacy

Ted Neward has an interesting rant what he calls the 11th fallacy. Specifically, centralizing all business rules is a fallacy...his 11th fallacy (http://www.neward.net/ted/weblog/index.jsp). His argument contends that that applications do perform some Business Rule Validations on the client and some on the Server and because you do this it's a fallacy to think you can centralize all business rules. Fallacy defined by Merriam-Webster is as follows

1 a obsolete : GUILE, TRICKERY b : deceptive appearance : DECEPTION
2 a : a false or mistaken idea <popular fallacies> b : erroneous character : ERRONEOUSNESS
3 : an often plausible argument using false or invalid inference

Webster's states a fallacy means obsolete. It then goes on to say it is Deceptive in Appearance“. I'll give you a “Deceptive in Appearance” because it is deceptive to think you can do so 100% of the time; however, I will raise an obsolete because the idea of trying to centralize all business rules is NOT obsolete to try.

In a perfect world there would be an auto-magical repository of business rules. In this auto-magical reality there would be a number of Adapters that would enable us to transform these different rules into different states. For example, there would be an adapter for generating javascript for a browser so that the same rules could be expressed in client-side script. There would also be an adapter that plugs into .Net and another for Java, etc.

However this auto-magical reality does not exist and probably never will. Industry veterans understand that it is good to try to centralize business rules; but, these same veterans understand from the get-go that they will be making sacrifices and break “Tier Purity“ in order to make a particular user-experience more platatable. This is what schools can't teach you. The experience to understand what can be done and when you should do it. The new or inexperienced developers often think in binary terms. I “will“ centralize all business rules and then get frustrated when they start trying to do so. Or they don't bother trying to centralize many rules because they think it is silly to try so why bother.

So is it a fallacy? Yes. I think it is, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't try. It reminds me of college and looking at a crowd of beautiful women. I knew it was a fallacy for me to think I had a chance. But I knew I was going to try.

-Mathew Nolton

3 Comments

  • Hey, is this the Matt Nolton that worked at SFI in the 90's??



    If this is from Jim Comparin. I was searching about SqlServer and stumbled onto this blog.



    if its you, comparin@eglin.af.mil

  • &quot;Webster's states a fallacy means obsolete.&quot;



    Not quite. The presence of the word &quot;obsolete&quot; in the definition means the words/phrases following the colon are obsolete definitions of the term. :)



    I don't mean to nitpick, but... ah hell, I'm nit-picking.

  • thanks for the enlightenment. in the end i think newards 11th fallacy blog entry is nit-picky too ;)



    -Mathew Nolton

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