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back to article Amid 'idiotic blockchain phase,' EY and Microsoft tout smart contracts

In an effort to demonstrate there are actual uses for blockchain technology, global professional services biz EY and Microsoft have teamed up to offer companies a way to manage rights and royalties. Though the system is designed to serve any industry that deals with intellectual property licensing and royalty payments, the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So Microsoft, who sells Azure SQL (relational) and Azure Cosmos (nonrelational), for scaled purposes, uses Blockchain for a data warehouse. *shakes head sadly*

    8 0 Reply
    1. Dr Who
      Reply Icon

      Exactly. We are left guessing what EY's five qualifying questions are and there are some key details missing from the article regarding voting nodes and who controls them, but almost certainly this should be handled by a conventional database. Nothing is gained in this scenario from using blockchain - except of course a shed load of PR column inches.

      5 0 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Blockchain != SQL

    It's that simple.

    Form 2 queues ... those that get it, and those that don't.

    0 3 Reply
    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Blockchain != SQL

      Yes I know

      Blockchain == linked list

      Linked lists were invented in 1955

      Relational databases were invented in 1970

      SQL was invented in 1973

      7 3 Reply
  3. katrinab Silver badge

    One thing to remember

    A "smart contract" is simply another word for a computer program.

    Yes, computer programs can be better than doing things manually. That's the whole reason why Microsoft is in business. It might have been newsworthy back in 1975, but not now.

    4 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One thing to remember

      "Smart Contracts" are great, assuming that there are no bugs or any clauses in a contract that might require the ability to interpret intent.

      I'm sure neither is ever a problem in IT.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: One thing to remember

        'Smart contracts' are just a terrible match for contracts: they're programs, which obviously have been known to contain bugs, especially when given unexpected input, and they're programs, which even if formally correct may not deal with all the edge cases which means contracts (real ones) need interpretation quite often, and finally they're immutable which makes them a pain to revoke (obviously you can add a later superseding one so this latter is may be not such a big problem).

        5 0 Reply
  4. Androgynous Cow Herd

    Buzzword marketing

    The reason for this “Innovation” is simple. It appeals to C levels who just got off of a plane where they read a primer level article on the “Blockchain” thing in the latest issue of “Overpaid CIO” magazine.

    6 2 Reply
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ubisoft the Microsoft partner

    Not to be confused with this one:

    https://www.eviscerati.org/comics

    0 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A five-point test that EY applies:-

    1. Are there multiple parties in this ecosystem? Blockchains get more secure with more

    parties in the network, one participant networks are not especially secure.

    2. Is establishing trust between all the parties an issue? Blockchains improve trust between

    participants by having multiple points of verification.

    3. Is it critical to have a tamper-proof permanent record of transactions? Blockchains

    create permanent records that cannot be edited or deleted.

    4. Are we securing the ownership or management of a finite resource? Core logic in the

    system is designed to prevent double counting of assets, record ownership and transfers.

    5. Does this ecosystem benefit from improved transparency? Blockchains are transparent

    by design — where ownership or control of assets is public and transparent by design.

    Item 3 nails it here... along with a date/time stamp...

    1 0 Reply

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