Bizarre database

[tn3270]

Just finished attending a software user conference, this morning I saw "User Presentation" where an organization describes an application they built. It was a good demo of using a Java and Web front end to assorted backend data bases. The organization is a state law enforcement agency. In the demo they showed us one of their database tables that enumerates "Tattoos, Marks and Scars" from descriptions by crime victims. It turns out they have specific database encodings for many of them, and they can catch bad guys based on distinct/unique tattoos. That was pretty strange.

Comments

[siderea]

I wonder who did the data modeling for that one. Was it a cop, or did some non-law-enforcement tech have to extract that from cops via domain expert interviews?

[tn3270.livejournal.com]

Non-law-enforcement techs (the presenter and his team) relied on reference materials previously prepared by domain experts.

[siderea]

Cool. Did you get a sense of how close to a data model the reference materials got?

[tn3270.livejournal.com]

Did not get into that level of detail in the presentation or the short chat I had with the presenter after the talk.

Another thing that was interesting is that they not only matched information against known patterns (for example, some street gangs have a signature tattoo), but also they looked for new patterns (if crimes are being committed by people who all have some previously unseen tattoo, maybe there is a new gang).