Why Smart Keys are Dumb and Dumb Keys are Smart – Capgemini Worldwide
Take the Barcode. Do you know what information is encoded into a barcode? Well there is a lead number to say whether its for local use or a global UPC… but after then its pretty much just a number.
What about the US Social Security Number? Well that is a ‘Smart’ number and guess what? Those clever folks in Pittsburgh at CMU worked out how to reverse engineer the Social Security Number.
This latter element is the final nail in the smart key concept. If you have two divisions that use ‘dumb’ codes you can create a new ‘dumb’ code which works over both and have a simple MDM cross reference which indicates system + dumb code mappings to the new universal dumb code. A Smart Code system would have to agree on the taxonomy, the sub-components and the various other elements that go into the smart code and fundamentally the new Smart Code would not be directly compatible with the old ones and systems that relied on the Smart Code would fail. Those that rely on a ‘Dumb’ code however can simply be repointed to the new information repository and retrieve the right information in the ‘old’ intelligent way.
Smart Coding was really an effort by people to reduce network traffic, and I’m a fan of doing that sometimes, but really in this day and age and with the MDM solutions that exist there is no excuse for choosing such a sub-optimal approach.
Why Smart Keys are Dumb and Dumb Keys are Smart – Capgemini Worldwide
Take the Barcode. Do you know what information is encoded into a barcode? Well there is a lead number to say whether its for local use or a global UPC… but after then its pretty much just a number.
What about the US Social Security Number? Well that is a ‘Smart’ number and guess what? Those clever folks in Pittsburgh at CMU worked out how to reverse engineer the Social Security Number.
This latter element is the final nail in the smart key concept. If you have two divisions that use ‘dumb’ codes you can create a new ‘dumb’ code which works over both and have a simple MDM cross reference which indicates system + dumb code mappings to
 the new universal dumb code. A Smart Code system would have to agree on the taxonomy, the sub-components and the various other elements that go into the smart code and fundamentally the new Smart Code would not be directly compatible with the old ones and systems that relied on the Smart Code would fail. Those that rely on a ‘Dumb’ code however can simply be repointed to the new information repository and retrieve the right information in the ‘old’ intelligent way.
Smart Coding was really an effort by people to reduce network traffic, and I’m a fan of doing that sometimes, but really in this day and age and with the MDM solutions that exist there is no excuse for choosing such a sub-optimal approach.