Re: Recursive queries in slow database

On Jan 11, 7:13 pm, Roy Hann <specia..._at_processed.almost.meat> wrote:
> Dr. Coffee wrote:
> > Hi all.
>
> > I am the user of a database, which is ridiculously slow for
> > even the simplest queries.  The vendor of the db soes a lot
> > of stuff that I am deeply suspicious of:
>
> > - They don't hire staff with SW/dB experience, but general
> >   MSc's and give them OJT.
>
> > - They have had no resources to provide proper OJT on SW/dbs
>
> > - They use one generic db model with a large number of clients
>
> > - Because of the generic architecture they use variables to
> >   indicate data type in the table, slowing queries down
>
> > - They claim to have come up with a particular nifty trick
> >   for recursive calls into the db, that they claim to be
> >   sole users of
>
> > All in all, I suspect these people are amateurs and dillettantes
> > who have no idea what they are doing. I would love to hire pros
> > to re-do the work these people are not able to, but in order to
> > do that I will need to come up with convincing arguments to
> > support a claim that there are severe problems.
>
> > Any hints on how to proceed?
>
> I assume "OJT" is on-the-job-training?  You claim they claim to do
> that training but don't?   One place to dig would be wherever you think
> there is evidence to support that view.
>
> Google for, and read about the Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) Model, which
> is what your description of their approach sounds like.

The Wikipedia EAV page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-attribute-value_model

certainly describes my situation with some accuracy.

> You will find
> ample discussion of why it is bad--not the least reason being that its
> practitioners are reimplementing the very thing an SQL DBMS is designed
> to do.

...which happens to be one of my main reasons for complaint wrt the product in question...

> It is invariably done only partially too, leaving out almost
> all of the important stuff a DBMS does, like providing data integrity
> checks, transaction isolation, etc.  

You wouldn't happen to know of some key words / phrases / acronyms to search for, that would guid me to alternatives to EAVs...?

DoC Received on Thu Jan 13 2011 - 03:03:57 CET