Re: Just one more anecdote

Dawn:

I'm thinking it's not just the dbms. The hypothesis that the complex, tiered, development model is the culprit here is an excellent fit for the facts in this case. In addition, it is an excellent predictor of future complex, tiered, development projects in the future.

A RDBMS has its limitations but I don't think it's fatal. True, one of the more flexible DBMS models will make the development less costly (easier) and thus more successful, but not for the suspected reasons. I believe the reason is because the flexible DBMS models incorporate tiers and simplify the development process.

A person who is completely familiar with payroll will develop a far more stable, flexible, and cost effective payroll package given the appropriate tools than a technologist who can manipulate tools that have no relationship to the payroll development environment. The flexible DBMS models contain a large amount of development tools and simplicity into their model.

Developing a computing solution is really a 95% solution...each component performs optimally 95% of the time. The more components used to build a solution the less stable it becomes. The R&R software writeoff is a prime example of this business and computing dilema.

It is a far better thing to consolidate development environments to make them manageable, and useful, to business people familiar with business problems than to break the development process into multiple tiers and components so the development process becomes a nightmare of competing skill sets, DBMS components that need specialty administrators, set theory extrapolation, network specialists that can barely keep the computing environment communicating, etc, etc, etc. :-)

Bill

"dawn" <dawnwolthuis_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1122344688.525517.39350_at_f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I'm sure there are numerous factors playing into the fact that the
> system touted in this MS Word document
> http://www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies/ShowFile.asp?FileResourceID=1611
>
> has been discontinued and written off to the tune of $67 million in s/w
> development as seen at
> http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050721/clth018.html?.v=16
>
> This is yet another instance where a legacy system written with a PICK
> (in this case), MUMPS, IMS, or other pre-relational database product
> didn't successfully make the jump to a SQL-RDBMS.
>
> It is very likely that the conceptual data model and surely the
> subsequent logical data model from which the original system was
> developed would not play to the strengths of the SQL-DBMS. As much as
> we might want to think otherwise, even the design of a conceptual data
> model is influenced by the designer's knowledge of the target dbms. A
> redesign of the data model for a SQL-DBMS is likely to both bump
> features and increase complexity -- a harsh one-two punch.
>
> My conjecture is that downgrading, I mean moving, from a graph data
> model to a relational data model and from a PICK dbms to the SQL-DBMS
> were significant factors in this project failure. I could be wrong, of
> course.
>
> smiles. --dawn
>
Received on Sat Aug 13 2005 - 10:32:01 CEST