Re: Deadly sins againts database performance/scalability

From: Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 14:55:55 -0800
Message-ID: <1070664986.169697@yasure>

Jeff wrote:

> In article <91884734.0312041722.4d009fac_at_posting.google.com>, joel-garry_at_home.com (Joel Garry) wrote:
> 
> 

>>The particular environment I was referring to was a very large
>>permanent shop with permanent employees. They had bought an off the
>>shelf package and had a large effort to modify it to their purposes,
>>both with contractors and permanent employees. In fact, there were
>>two large shops, in competition to do the same thing. One shop was
>>using a layered approach, putting all new objects in separate schemata
>>with private synonyms, while the other hacked away. They both were
>>using Oracle tools to reverse-engineer the product, and both were
>>traditional top-down shops, newly coming to Oracle from COBOL, and
>>neither had the type of dba that would be necessary for what we are
>>discussing here. Eventually one shops methodology took over, due to
>>political reasons. Somehow, it all got done, albeit slowly. Which is
>>a lot more than can be said for their DW project.
>>
>>"Management problem" is an understatement.

> 
> 
> You are describing my personal nightmare... one that I've fought tooth and 
> nail against from the bottom up.  I believe we could design and develop a 
> brand new system that'd be as good or better than what you'd end up with by 
> buying and extensively modifying something.  My personal bias.

 From my experience you'd be right far more than wrong. I am aware of a system in King County Washington, based on Informix. They had a quote to build from scratch for $700,000. They bought an OTS prouct for $70,000. They have now spent 2.1 million tax payer dollars trying to modify the beast.

Oh yeah. And no one likes it either.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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Received on Fri Dec 05 2003 - 16:55:55 CST