vincent
10-29-2008 10:48 AM
… for the vendor collateral included in the conference bags had a clear winner: a certain decision table tool vendor’s “Treasure Map”. This carefully pre-crumpled sheet indeed contained treasures, but not, one suspects, as the vendor intended. These were statements such as:
- “the RETE wall of performance scalability”
(presumably nothing but Rete algorithm-based rule engines can get close to climbing this - which is unfortunate as this vendor does not support production rules, Rete or otherwise),
- the “tar pit of wimpy templates”
(presumably a reference to the role of decision table-based rule templates for sticky rule scenarios at a fast food chain), and
- “rules buried in technical languages”
(probably a dig at writing business rules as Plain Old Java, COBOL, BPEL, or something equally daft).
Luckily the vendor involved realized it needed to compensate attendees for this “marketing” by giving away its technology at their stand, although this fine offer did somewhat contradict the follow-up claim that said technology was at the same time a “$5,000 value”.
Honorable mention must go to the runner-up, one of the major BRMS vendors, who decided an orange fridge magnet with their tool’s Infoworld review scores on it was just the ticket. Fridge magnet? With a list of review scores? Just what sort of warped mind comes up with these ideas?
DISCLAIMER: this was an award I was happy to see TIBCO not competing for at this event!
Source...
10-29-2008
