Re: Throwing this out there for discussion

Tom Swier wrote:

> 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

[Quoted] There is really way too much of this type of stuff out there. And one thing the Oracle developer and [Quoted] DBA community could do for itself would be to name names and stop doing business with these people [Quoted] until they clean up their act.

Daniel Morgan Received on Tue Jan 28 2003 - 17:34:02 CET