Saw this article's title on a news feed and I thought there might finally be some enlightened discussion on databases and agile development on SSC.

Instead I found :

- A DBA (who believes his databases are the "foundation" of all good projects) justifying how some cool, new agile buzzwords apply to him also.

(Thus, he is cool also. Many other DBA's also agreed with him, so they must be cool too!)

- Previous buzzwords and good practices dug up and equated to agile development buzzwords.

- Crazy analogy regarding "Christmas dinner of the nymphomaniacs anonymous society!".

- Opinion on the Iraq war as if HE knew the all requirements up-front. (Maybe a well thought out database schema would have helped our war effort.)

- Final thoughts that have nothing to do with agile development.

- Business as usual - keep making CRUD, but "prioritize" your CRUD.

Please read Scott Ambler's book for yourself, don't take Mr. Poole's assessment as the whole agile story. Some of the concepts in his book might push you out of your comfort zone. That is where the growth is.

If you dig a little deeper into agile development you may find that often the early parts of a project don't require a relational database at all. (Don't throw things at me!) It may just slow the development cycle down. But contributing your "data" expertise in other ways might be helpful in making a transition later - IF THE REQUIREMENTS SURFACE! If they never do, you will still have contributed something important to the project.