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Home -> Community -> Usenet -> c.d.o.misc -> Re: Oracle Contractor's Estimate Too High ?
As a contractor, the following would give me pause:
>Some of the fields have colon delimited values in them:
>
>Ex: :these:are:the:values:in:this:field:
>
>The assumption being that the programmer would use a like statement to
>search this field.
To me, this strongly suggests that there will be some redesign involved to make this more than a kludgey system.
Frances Edelstein
Author of Learning Oracle Database Programming
Relational Business Systems
fran_at_rbsbooks.com
http://www.rbsbooks.com
>Help ! I'm not sure if my contractor's estimate for working on our
>database is accurate. I'm just a humble perl hacker and know just a
>little bit about database design. If any DBA's out there could read my
>dilemma and post a candid opinion, I would really appreciate it. Thanks
>in advance.
>
>
>Here's my dilemma:
>
>I am working on an internet project ( 24x7 high availability.. you know,
>the usual ) that uses perl scripts to access an Oracle database.
>
>The database currently has tables with names such as WTDCOMM and fields
>with names like WTDPLNT. Needless to say, everything needs to be
>renamed.
>
>The only documentation is a stack of pages that maps the field and table
>names to terse one sentence descriptions of what they mean.
>
>Ex: WTDCOMM - Table of Common Names
>
>There is no documentation about primary, foreign keys etc.
>
>My only other resource is the SQL from the scripts which currently
>access the database. I also work with the person ( my boss ) who created
>the database so I can pick her brains about it when necessary.
>
>The database consists of about 30 tables. Some tables have over tens of
>thousands of records, some only a few ( less than 20 ). The database and
>the tables were all set up using the default values in the Oracle Schema
>Manager.
>
>Some of the fields have colon delimited values in them:
>
>Ex: :these:are:the:values:in:this:field:
>
>The assumption being that the programmer would use a like statement to
>search this field.
>
>
>At some point, I realized that the database need to be overhauled,
>optimized for speed, made more better in general. I called in a
>contractor who looked at the database and said that just for the initial
>database design and data modeling it would take about 120 hours. At the
>time, I thought this was reasonable.
>
>Today in a meeting, the head of the IT department said the he could do
>all of the design work in 4 hours and that the person who originally
>designed the database and I should be able to do it in a day.
>
>Our in house sys admin gave us the opinion that it shouldn't be that
>hard and shouldn't take that many hours (120) and said most of our
>optimization would be in the SQL statments and not the database anyway.
>And that we could change things as we go if we need to.
>
>So, am I being screwed by the contractor or does 120 hours seem
>reasonable for a contractor to come in, learn how things work, do the
>data modeling and help up set up the new database ? Please be as candid
>as possible. The difference between the 4 hours quoted by the head of
>the IT department and the 120 quoted by the contractor seems immense.
>Who's right ?
>
>Thanks in advance !
>
>Tim
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Received on Tue Sep 07 1999 - 13:53:42 CDT
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