RE: another failed attempt at database independence
- From: "Baumgartel, Paul" <paul.baumgartel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ricks12345@xxxxxxxxx, oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 12:01:42 -0400
*sigh* What is wrong with people? Not using any Oracle features is
akin to buying a car, considering it only as a wheeled transportation
device, and refusing to use the engine and transmission! You want DB
independence? Write your own RDBMS, then! You won't be beholden to any
vendors that way.
Paul Baumgartel
CREDIT SUISSE
Information Technology
Prime Services Databases Americas
One Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10010
USA
Phone 212.538.1143
paul.baumgartel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.credit-suisse.com
________________________________
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rick Ricky
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 11:21 AM
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: another failed attempt at database independence
The Defense Travel System (DTS) is attempting to move to database
independence. Last I read a few years ago they spent $600 million on
this application up to that point. I'm sure its alot higher now.
Probably close to $1 billion or more. It basically handles all of the
commercial travel for the US Department of Defense (over 3 million
users). They have over 2 TBs of data. They did not design for archiving
so it will grow indefinitely.
They are currently working on a "technical refresh" (supposedly that is
their PR word for "pay us to write this piece of junk software again").
They wrote their new modules against a mySQL database using an
outsourced
sub-contracting company(which made money even though this failed
completely. I think the company is Dovel. Not sure. Might be IDC). They
wanted to prove they could make the application database independent.
They used a tool called Hybernate to generate all their queries.
Probably spent millions of dollars on this re-write of the code.
They deployed it to production 2 weeks ago and it was so bad that the
whole system was down for 3.5 days. This means EVERY person who works
for the department of defense could not book commercial travel
or get reimbursed or book hotels or get reimbursed for taxis or meals,
or CHANGE FLIGHTS if they were overseas for 3.5 days. They had to back
out the changes. It totally failed. Now since this is a time and
material contract(they make more money if they screw up), they are
getting paid more money to fix it.
They do not have any code built into their application to let them
detect where the performance problems may be. Its so pathetic I have
been told their DBAs laugh at the rest of the team in their meetings.
More of my tax money down in flames. They already paid for the oracle
licenses. Migrating 2 TBs of data that is GROWING to another database is
so unlikely it is laughable. Yet the DoD got sold on database
independence. They are not allowed to use ANY oracle features. It would
mean days of down time just to move the data to the new database and
this is before even testing it. That is not going to happen. The data
model has no normalization or primary keys at all (they ignore their
DBAs).
btw, if you google defense travel system you will see criticisms of the
project going back almost 10 years. yes its been in constant development
for 10 years and its still not done.
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