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You should see the one here. An old flat file database monstrosity from the 80s, imported into oracle, complete with all of the duplicated data. It's the most n

You should see the one here. An old flat file database monstrosity from the 80s, imported into oracle, complete with all of the duplicated data. It's the most non relational, relational database ever.

zimpenfish 9y ago
Would a database stored in an XML file shared between 60+ clients over NFS beat that for monstrositiness?
- cntlzw 9y ago
  How concurrent is that? Can't imagine how writing to the file is even achieved.
  - shoo 9y ago
    maybe there is an email thread shared between all clients for acquiring / releasing the write lock on the xml file
    - K-Wall 9y ago
      Semaphore as a service Slack Chat bot.
      - noir_lord 9y ago
        Seen that. Shared drive with excel files, people would shout at each other to 'release the lock'
        zimpenfish 9y ago
        Yeah, first real job had the customer database as a VB frontend onto an Access file shared over {whatever Win95 was using in 1996-97}. After a few snafus, the CS / Sales people learned that they had to single-task with the database.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    "Badly". At least once a week someone managed to overwrite a change another client had just made. When I left, they were running a cron to copy it every minute as a "quick restore" when it happened.
- overcast 9y ago
  Well, this is used now by about 4000 clients. So you be the judge. There is so many indexes, and spaghetti, just to make sure every possible "relationship" is accounted for. Amazing it works at all. Just using an XML file is pretty crazy though.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  This is a special level of hell.
- jboy55 9y ago
  Lol, if it sent emails, I might know of such a system
- abraae 9y ago
  That made me snort my coffee.
noir_lord 9y ago
I have 177 tables, 764 stored procedures and 44 joins. Every single table has either a uniqid() or a UUID() which isn't the primary key (they all have incrementing integer keys) but is 'joined' on in code. When he needs to 'join' he used coalesce() on selects. Referential integrity doesn't exist. Oh and the cherry on the shit sandwhich, we have four seperate systems that talk to this database written in 3 different languages (Java (Android scanners), C# (Factory scanners) and PHP (the main system). So there is no way to accurately know which SP's are used by what without grepping the entire codebase looking for call <foo>. The PHP is written badly in the old PHP pure procedural style running on an outdated version of PHP/Debian/MySQL. Basically if you took the absolute worst approach to everything this would be the end result. It's good fun!.

zimpenfish 9y ago

Would a database stored in an XML file shared between 60+ clients over NFS beat that for monstrositiness?

cntlzw 9y ago
How concurrent is that? Can't imagine how writing to the file is even achieved.
- shoo 9y ago
  maybe there is an email thread shared between all clients for acquiring / releasing the write lock on the xml file
  - K-Wall 9y ago
    Semaphore as a service Slack Chat bot.
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      Seen that. Shared drive with excel files, people would shout at each other to 'release the lock'
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        Yeah, first real job had the customer database as a VB frontend onto an Access file shared over {whatever Win95 was using in 1996-97}. After a few snafus, the CS / Sales people learned that they had to single-task with the database.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  "Badly". At least once a week someone managed to overwrite a change another client had just made. When I left, they were running a cron to copy it every minute as a "quick restore" when it happened.
overcast 9y ago
Well, this is used now by about 4000 clients. So you be the judge. There is so many indexes, and spaghetti, just to make sure every possible "relationship" is accounted for. Amazing it works at all. Just using an XML file is pretty crazy though.
toomuchtodo 9y ago
This is a special level of hell.
jboy55 9y ago
Lol, if it sent emails, I might know of such a system
abraae 9y ago
That made me snort my coffee.

noir_lord 9y ago

I have 177 tables, 764 stored procedures and 44 joins. Every single table has either a uniqid() or a UUID() which isn't the primary key (they all have incrementing integer keys) but is 'joined' on in code. When he needs to 'join' he used coalesce() on selects. Referential integrity doesn't exist. Oh and the cherry on the shit sandwhich, we have four seperate systems that talk to this database written in 3 different languages (Java (Android scanners), C# (Factory scanners) and PHP (the main system). So there is no way to accurately know which SP's are used by what without grepping the entire codebase looking for call <foo>. The PHP is written badly in the old PHP pure procedural style running on an outdated version of PHP/Debian/MySQL. Basically if you took the absolute worst approach to everything this would be the end result. It's good fun!.