Re: company database architect that doesn't like rdbms?

  • From: Robert Freeman <robertgfreeman@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: oracledbaquestions@xxxxxxxxx, ORACLE-L <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 19:46:40 -0700 (PDT)

I have the quote, but not the source of the quote here that I like that I think 
addresses this thinking...

"Anyone can re-invent every system out there from the word go..... is it worth 
it? In most cases, of course not! Why? Because they are increasing the total 
cost of development when they ignored previous IT science and development. They 
have ignored what is already there, ready to be used, debugged, tuned and 
optimized ten orders of magnitude better than what they would be able to 
achieve 
in a typically costed product.....

....These folks should try to use te software that is already out there instead 
of re-inventing the wheel for every project they get involved in."

This quote was more directed at the j2ee crowd that wants to ignore the use of 
FK's and other constraints, but I think it applies here. How much does this 
"architect" think Google spent on their database solution (and by the way, they 
still use Oracle). These home grown database solutions are expensive, and very 
few companies really have the resources or need to build such solutions. 
Besides 
being expensive, custom made solutions are often built to deal with custom made 
problems. As a result they work great for one kind of computing but suck at 
other kinds of computing. Take certain data warehouse solutions. They are great 
when concurrency is low but you throw any kind of concurency or transactional 
load at them and they fall apart.... while on the other hand Oracle can support 
the load (if properly architected) and then some.

The problem I see with developers is not that they run their mouths off, but 
that they don't ask questions, and don't bother to understand the product they 
are using (the same might be said about some DBA's too). They don't bother to 
understand that they have a tool at their hand, and it works efficiently when 
used in the way intended. All to often, they don't bother to use it the way 
it's 
intended. They want to say "it should work this way", "it should be able to do 
this",  or better yet, "I don't trust the database to do what I want." 


Then they use tools like hibernate that inherently make for in-efficient 
interfacing with the database, use procedural processing instead of group/set 
processing and don't write tuned SQL code and have the gaul to wonder, why is 
the database so slow.

Sigh..... I love developers, I really do..... but they need to be taught..... 
they need to learn. That is the point in some senses of my DBA 3.0 series on my 
blog (which I need to post part three on).... that we as DBA's are somewhat 
responsible for this. We have not been evangelests, we have not sold our wares, 
or taught the lessons that need to be taught. 


Have we really been good stewards of our knowledge? That is the question.

Robert

 Robert G. Freeman
Master Principal Consultant, Oracle Corporation, Oracle ACE
Author of various books on RMAN, New Features and this shorter signature line.
Blog: http://robertgfreeman.blogspot.com


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________________________________
From: Dba DBA <oracledbaquestions@xxxxxxxxx>
To: ORACLE-L <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thu, May 12, 2011 6:07:37 PM
Subject: company database architect that doesn't like rdbms?

http://www.cvent.com/en/company/positions/database-architect.shtml

" When you think data, you chuckle at terabytes, relish petabytes, and dream 
beyond exabytes. You think RDBMS may be the problem, rather than always looking 
to it as the solution."

I have seen that rdbms is not the perfect solution for everything. For example, 
google has their own database. Verisign has a database they wrote in C that 
does 
billions of executions/day. I read that facebook is using some kind of graphing 
database. 

However, when I work with internet developers (it is almost always java guys 
who 
do this), they tend to run their mouths, but have never worked on anything at 
all and deliver garbage. The java guys at Fannie Mae tried to ignore the 
database for their mortgage backed security application. They spent $600 
million 
(this number came from their executives) and they ended up throwing it all 
away. 

Anyone have experience with people who actually know anything when they talk 
about this type of thing? here is a short note, I found about a database 
product 
that my space uses.

http://www.cio.com/article/361313/Startup_Launches_Internet_Scale_Database

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