Re: A DBA philosopical question

"HansF" <News.Hans_at_telus.net> wrote in message news:pan.2005.12.03.01.38.04.725995_at_telus.net...
> On Sat, 03 Dec 2005 01:18:46 +0000, Bob Jones wrote:
>
>>
>> "HansF" <News.Hans_at_telus.net> wrote in message
>> news:pan.2005.12.02.23.25.39.864182_at_telus.net...
>>> On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 22:48:59 +0000, Randy Harris wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, an excellent article. Mr. Kagel doesn't seem very fond of RAID
>>>> 5.
>>>
>>> He's not the only one - look at the list of BAARFers
>>>
>>
>> I have read many articles like that. They always seem to lack
>> practicality.
>> The notion of "RAID 5 is bad" is very misleading. It has its pros and
>> cons
>> just like any other RAIDs. Whether to use it is heavily application
>> dependent.
>>
>
> It's RAID, therefore it must be good, right? After all, it's buzzword
> compliant and there are papers of various colours describing it.
>
> And it's the cheapest of the RAIDs that purports to give some protections,
> so that makes it excellent!
>

No one is saying RAID must be good or excellent. It is unfortunate to think that way or the opposite.

> The above is as far as any non-technical manager wants to take the
> discussion - and hopefully that satisfies the balance between
> techno-dweebs and accounting-trolls.
>

I am not sure about that one. I wish I could read my manager's mind.

> As you say, it's application dependent. The problem is, unless there is
> heavy use of memory in front of the disk, a database application is not
> among the list of optimal uses.
>

Well, there are more than one kind of database application. They all have different requirements.

>> If RAID 5 is all that bad, why is it so widely used and supported?
>
> MacDonalds is widely used and heavily supported, as is WalMart. Are they
> good as well? Does the populist model define good, or 'popular therefore
> with minimum social risk'?
>

You may have missed my point. Things don't have to be either good or bad, black or white. That's exactly the point I was trying to make. Received on Fri Dec 02 2005 - 20:21:56 CST