Re: Throwing this out there for discussion

DA Morgan <damorgan_at_exesolutions.com> wrote in message news:<3E35C19D.3C75C3D1_at_exesolutions.com>...
> Tom Swier wrote:
>
> > This is the scenario:
> >
> > You walk into a company that has an 8i (8.1.7) database running on
> > UNIX. There is no documentation for the database, i.e., there is
> > absolutely no documentation that tells what the applications that hit
> > the database are doing, when they do it, or how they do it. You don't
> > have access to the application source code (written in C) to figure
> > out what the applications are doing. Users access the database with
> > these applications from client workstations running Win2K. The company
> > won't pay to buy ERWin or any other tool so you can reverse-engineer
> > the database. How do you figure out what is going on so you can
> > generate adhoc reports and do updates on the database like the
> > applications do, but using SQL and PL/SQL?
> >
> > I had a person ask me this and I stood there like an idiot because I
> > couldn't answer their question due to all the foot-shuffling and
> > hemming and hawing. I thought I had it bad!
> >
> > Tom
>
> SELECT table_name, column_name, data_type, etc.
> FROM user_tab_columns;
>
> SELECT from user_dependencies
> SELECT from user_source
> SELECT from user_constraints
> SELECT from user_triggers
> SELECT from user_synonyms
> SELECT from user_sequences
> SELECT from user_sys_privs
> SELECT from user_tab_privs
> SELECT from user_col_privs
> etc.
>
> Then
>
> SELECT from v_$open_cursor
> etc.
>
> Intersperse with cursing the moron that bought a product without
> documentation, source code, or a clue about what he/she was doing.
> Remembering full well that their blood pressure is lower than yours.
>
> Daniel Morgan

That's pretty much the same thing I told this person. Lacking any kind of documentation or software to do it the easy way, the only recourse was to go into the database and see what it has to say about itself. I worked for a company several years ago that put me in a similar situation as this person is in, but I was fortunate in that the people who had designed the database and wrote the applications were still around. Between them and the system tables in the database, I was able to come up with a pretty good idea how things worked.

Tom Swier Received on Tue Jan 28 2003 - 12:42:33 CET