I am not sure this is the best place to post so let me know if I
should post someplace else. I work for a state environmental
wastewater agency that hired an outside contractor to design an oracle
web based database to track wastewater violations and enforcements.
The project went very poorly, a few careers damaged, a new contractor
was hired, and now several dozen of us "power users" have been given
the task of redesigning the screens and we do not have enough
knowledge to specify what we want. We know what we want, but I am
afraid if we do not specifically ask for a feature, we will be told it
is not possible or at least be met by silence. The names of a few
books and authors are what are needed. I do not think what we would
ask for would be too hard to do.

There are a number of different types of permits such as landfills,
discharges to streams and ocean, discharge to percolation ponds, storm
water, underground fuel tanks, toxic chemicals into groundwater and
others. The diversity requires that certain choices be available for
one permit type and not available for others. Also, if there are a
number of violations for a site, it would be nice to have a screen
that allows one enforcement activity to be linked with all the
associated violations by checking the boxes near the violations list.
Redundant facilities are also a problem because may times an
inexperienced user will create a new facility when one already
exists. Violations can be split between two facilities that should
have been only one entity. What books do you recommend?