Building a Production Database

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Building a Production Database

  • "The one database item that I think really can matter is linked to storage systems, but I think it applies to databases. "...bias heavily towards consistency and durability rather than availability.." The reasoning being these are harder to fix. While database platforms often handle this well, we often don't take advantage of PKs, FKs, and other items that help ensure consistency in our system. Too often I see people trying to retrofit these items in later when the data is a mess. I really worry about this in systems built on NoSQL platforms."

    I agree 100% with this, even though it sort of got me into trouble more than once.  My take was also that 'no data is better than invalid data'.  During probably my last ten or fifteen years working with database systems, the emphasis was more and more availability while less and less on consistency (accuracy/validity).

    My last employer had positions called 'Project Managers' who thought they owned the systems and controlled everything related to them.  While the emphasis and concern were on availability, it became virtually impossible to get modifications implemented, even fixes for proven data validity issues.   I had issued bug fixes for at least a dozen coding errors by developers that produced invalid historical data that went unimplemented through the remaining life of the systems.

    This was exactly the opposite of my ongoing inclination that invalid data is worthless, and even dangerous, data.

    I can't speak to the NoSQL thing because I have no experience there, but I do have concern for the current things I read about 'teach kids to code' and related thoughts.  This seems to be promoting the idea of data systems being 'fun' instead of being serious efforts.

    Related to all this, my obsession is that even though I'm 78 years old I am still working on my personal data, getting it digitized,   correcting bad design decisions I made years ago, etc.   I can personally attest that it often more difficult to correct data than to create the data in the first place.

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

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