I've seen a lot of debates over the years on various database related topics. Identities, NULLs and more seem to top the list, but there's one thing that occurred to me recently that I hadn't seen debated.

Most of us don't start work with a brand new company and get to build the systems from the ground up. I once started a company (this one) and even then we ended up using some existing code and had to make do with what was there. We often have to work with developers or DBAs that have been making changes to the system in their own way, and we have to fit in.

I started at a small company one time that had been around for about 4-5 months, and they had a small e-commerce system in place. I was hired as the first DBA for the existing 3-4 developers and was amazed by how much stuff they already had in place and how difficult it was to implement just simple controls to make things more repeatable and manageable for everyone.

So for this Friday's poll:

What's more important: quality or consistency?

Would you want to make sure that everyone wrote top quality code at the risk of conflict and alienating yourself from a group of people? Would you jeopardize deadlines or ask for more work to ensure quality?

Or would you try to make sure that everyone was at least consistent in how they developed and implemented systems. Is it more important that everyone's on the same page?

I know you can achieve both since I've done it in places. However it's not always that easy to tackle both ideas at one time. I've typically gone for consistency first, usually on day 2 or 3, to make sure that everyone is following the same rules for naming, formatting, version control, release control, etc. After that, I try to slowly mentor and work with people to raise the quality bar, something that could take years.

I'm sure some of you have strong opinions on this, but if you walked into a situation, what are you more concerned with?

Steve Jones

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