June 23, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item <A HREF="/articles/Editorial/70561/">Dinosaur Databases</A>
June 23, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Just to clarify, what are we talking about:
- SQL
- RDBMS
- Relational theory
- Siloed apps
- Database as a concept (i.e. a store of data that can be queried)
- Poor design
- Interop constraints
You certainly don't need a 30 year-old application running on antiquated hardware to have a "dinosaur database". You can create one of those using Access 2010. By "dinosaur", I mean: inflexible, non-integrated, hard to query, slow, and poorly designed.
James Stover, McDBA
June 23, 2010 at 11:54 pm
It has nothing to do with the database.
Its to do with the applications not having a service interface.
If i have a SOA application its data could come form a text file and it could still service up requests for its data.
June 24, 2010 at 12:02 am
some real dinosaurs were very very fast and very flexible.
No able to be queried or were not very integrated.
June 24, 2010 at 12:23 am
If you read the blogger's bio, he's a financial journalist turned tech journalist. I'd be surprised if he could spell "relational database" without a spell checker.
James, you hit it right on the head. A bad decision (more likely a series of bad decisions) at Vodafone = RDBMSes are bad? It's like a conversation I overheard when a person was asked "should I buy a Nikon or Canon camera?" The reply: "Well, I can take equally bad pictures with both".
The issue that has caught me off guard about the "noSQL revolution" is its associated religious fervor. Throw in the O/R Mapping trends and you practically have a holy war. Maybe it would have been the same with XML, O-O & Object-Relational databases if the internet had been as prevalent when they were introduced as it is today.
How is it that otherwise sane people don't see that a media-serving web site doesn't have the same data management needs as a multinational corporation's billing system?
Are we really living in a world where something is obsolete because it can't handle the 12% of the market space that gets 80% of the news headlines?
I guess I'm just waiting for a utopia where actual, useful technical developments and related techniques determine success more than which tech vendor can craft the most attention-getting press releases and can snag the biggest share of the blogging community.
Phil Helmer
Database Engineer
June 24, 2010 at 2:50 am
Dinosaurs get an undeservedly bad press. They survived successfully on earth far longer than the mammals have ever done.
Before I really understood relational databases, I had ten or more exciting ideas of better, more effective, systems. Nowadays, I'm perfectly content with a relational system.
An old database server running SQL Server 7, running an old database that hasn't been altered for years need not be a bad idea as long as the many security holes have been plugged. Even an old ISAM Database isn't necessarily a problem: I even warm to harvesting data from single-purpose systems created up to thirty years ago: there is invariably a way to export data from them, even if it is a test of ingenuity. I've even created interfaces before now that pretend to be printers. It is more likely the prospect of interfacing with a OODBMS via a webservice that will make me shake with apprehension
Best wishes,
Phil Factor
June 24, 2010 at 2:57 am
Relational databases promised to solve the problem of duplicate data stores that were present in Cobol and other 3GL languages, but we kept on building applications with their own data store. We are responsible for not having a common data model across the organization and creating silos.
June 24, 2010 at 4:18 am
I must object to the use of "old" to SQL. We are dealing with a reliable system in the hands of a capable person.
The appropriate word is just in the tip of my mind, but I just came in from an hours-long meeting showing what we have done with SSIS, OLAP and automation with SQL Agent. I will have to rest.
June 24, 2010 at 5:13 am
Since some systems I worked on are old enough to be considered 'dinosaurs', there were some that had a short lifespan from the start because of the system designers. Other lasted many years before they were rewritten to use bleeding-edge technology to do the same thing as the ousted system. In a few systems, they are still going after 20 years - still running on a VAX using the codysal (sp?) database that was the 'in' thing back then.
I just wanted to point out how easy it is to criticize systems, but I think authors should try and balance out what they call dinosaurs systems with the systems that were designed well.
Design a system, then select the platforms based on your budget and other requirement.
-- Al
June 24, 2010 at 8:46 am
phelmer (6/24/2010)
If you read the blogger's bio, he's a financial journalist turned tech journalist. I'd be surprised if he could spell "relational database" without a spell checker.
The "journalist" is also probably receiving kick backs that are influencing his spin. Rarely do we see true journalism any more. Critical thinking is a lost art form - if I see it on the Internet it must be true, if I see it on MSNBC it must be true, if a (shudder) politician promises something it must be true.
Just because someone has a new product, and their marketing materials make claims that it is superior, does not make it so!!
If we want to place blame anywhere, how about on the corporations that don't take the time to do proper testing of their applications, don't do proper design work, and frequently don't bother to elicit the real requirements. If we aren't willing to spend the money to design something correct from the start, we can't blame the tools we used - we need to blame the inept management.
Dave
June 24, 2010 at 10:46 am
Queries you think it is difficult to make a query in an RDMS normalized table structure?
Then think about where I work where the norm was no relational database design they created a couple of hundred flat files in 1NF now the queries are impossible as well as thousands of orphaned records. Indexes are complex indexes by using create date time as the primary key plus a non unique repeating part number.
Complex queries are not a big deal and you can wizard them. If your queries is so complex I bet your initial database design is flawed!
Obviously, the author does not know what he is talking about.
June 24, 2010 at 10:55 am
At the risk of being pilloried.
Having a system with a data oubliette (data goes in, but it never comes out) is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't want my financial records, health records, and internet browsing habits to be correlated.
On the other hand, the vendor lock in of proprietary data storage is a big problem for business.
--
JimFive
June 24, 2010 at 10:59 am
I think this is a journalist trying for reads, and getting excited about this "nosql" movement that seems to power the largest web companies out there. However I think he's missing the relation (no pun intended) between the limitations of old systems and the databases that are being used.
Could SQL Server (or Oracle/DB2/MySQL) power Facebook? Sure, but a different architecture would be needed. Facebook and Google have done amazing engineering jobs. It's not their database that makes things work.
June 24, 2010 at 11:22 am
Data Oubliette
! A great name. We used to call 'em 'Write-only' databases.
The real NoSQL people are the first to admit that their systems only deal with those 'edge' cases where the data doesn't lend itself to relational modelling. the NoSQL guys I've talked to in the UK are very reasonable folks who fully support relational databases for almost all commercial purposes.
Best wishes,
Phil Factor
June 24, 2010 at 12:06 pm
People need to get past the idea that relational databases are obsolete because they don’t do every possible thing anyone could ever want to do with data.
Doesn’t handle streaming interactive multimedia well? Obsolete
Doesn’t run on the iPhone? Obsolete
Tables don’t map directly to objects in my code and allow me to create complete applications with no effort? Obsolete
Requires me to have a basic knowledge of relational database theory in order to effectively develop applications? Obsolete
Doesn’t prevent me from creating bad designs or queries that don’t produce the results I want? Obsolete
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