Re: "All triggers are evil",..., really?

From: Nuno Souto <dbvision_at_iinet.net.au>
Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:24:36 +1000
Message-ID: <48BFB764.30906@iinet.net.au>


Connor McDonald wrote,on my timestamp of 3/09/2008 11:48 PM:

> I always find it hilarious when you have to wear the day-to-day hit of
> capturing changes to every row on every row due to some "cast hard in
> concrete business rule of - thou shalt audit everything" ....but then
> take a system outage because a large scale data change has to occur, and
> the same people then insert .../"but we don't want to audit that/" comes
> along the line...

Heh! This one reminded me of a meeting late last year to discuss SLA's for high availability.

me: You want what?

HA"expert": 4 9s availability!

me: As in 99.99%?

HA"expert": No, as in 99.9999%!

me: Are you aware how long that is? In the order of seconds outage per year! Veeeeery expensive to achieve!

HA"expert":Yes, but senior management has a report where Gartner says companies of the size of yours MUST have that level of HA.

me(with instant rash, after "Gartner says"): But how do we maintain and patch up our systems without implementing everything in active-passive clustering?

HA"expert":: Business has agreed with management there will be a one day monthly outage for maintenance!

me: Well, if there is a one day monthly outage then we can't possibly be doing 4 9s HA according to your own definition! That's not even 99.99% HA!

HA"expert": Of course we are! On the rest of the month, we have 4 9s HA!

me: Listen! 4 9s HA is actually, by ANY definition of the IT industry *including* Gartner's and the IEEE, 99.99%. Which already means LESS THAN 1 HOUR OUTAGE in the WHOLE year! You simply cannot claim 12 days of outage per year is 99.9999% HA, that is a FALSE statement! Furthermore: do you realize that in our CURRENT configuration we actually achieved 100% (no failures whatsoever) HA in this last year? Why do you want to tamper with that?

HA"expert": You are just being intentionally difficult and trying to stop this company evolving to this millenium! I am going to report you to senior management!

Elbonia is real, folks...

PS: the 99.9999% "HA" is dead in the water after they looked at the bottom line needed to achieve it! Sanity prevailed, thank Codd!

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
in sunny Sydney, Australia
dbvision_at_iinet.net.au
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Received on Thu Sep 04 2008 - 05:24:36 CDT

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