*Fact*: technology outside the DBMS is changing orders of magnitudes faster than is the DBMS. I refer to these technologies as 'technologies du jour' (hot and sexy today, forgotten tommorow). *Question*: Given this fact, would it not be *much* more wise to design applications for 'technology-dujour' independence? That is, put everyting inside the (stable) DBMS, and as little as possible outside of it.... On 5/7/08, Rick Ricky <ricks12345@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > 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. > -- +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Toon Koppelaars RuleGen BV +31-615907269 toon_at_rulegen_dot_com www_dot_rulegen_dot_com Author: "Applied Mathematics for Database Professionals"