The Work of the Ancients

• SQL51F1

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  October 13, 2019 at 11:51 pm

  #3688349

  I am in the same boat now...

  We have a number of systems that are either:

  - production-by-stealth (start as a PoC and then remain in a Dev environment while being forced to regard it as Prod), or

  - poorly designed by non-professionals-masquerading-as-professionals utilising appalling standards and a thorough lack of willingness to create anything of any quality.

  Then there are the vendors who refuse to consider that there are people out there who know how to design a database correctly and know what is required to tune a system to make it perform.  The vast majority of problems comes down to code + poor design.  Then there are those who support the system who say that we cannot upset the vendor for fear of having them refuse to support us.  I don't know what world they live in where you pay a vendor 6-figures a month in support for them to dictate terms to you.

  In a previous position, I indicated to a Senior Government Official at a Townhall setting that there were support people in the room that were younger than some of the systems that needed to be supported - and that management were the blockers to them being upgraded.  Of course, that resulted in a tumbling of the poop from the CIO all the way down the tree to my manager to reprimand me.  My reply was that I refuse to accept the reprimand and that it was the wrong forum to perform that action even though they had constantly ignored the problems and risks for years - and that the responsibility was theirs for anything going wrong.

  A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

• Robin Wilson

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  October 27, 2019 at 7:37 pm

  #3692247

  I just turned off a system I developed in 1999 where I re-write the application in 2010 but kept the same database (although amended some columns). This year the owner of the company retired so I shut it down over the summer.

  Database was quite simple so didn't really have any fundamental flaws. Initial version would have been subject to SQL injection though I believe.

  Oldest one now is a CRM-type system from around 2008 that I redeveloped last year. The database had a few changes, mainly around how I had named things.