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That will only work if the entire "global megacorp"'s database is the web shop database that you describe. How else are you going to show availability of produc
by skrebbel 7y ago
That will only work if the entire "global megacorp"'s database is the web shop database that you describe. How else are you going to show availability of products in a shop nearby you? How are you going to combine the webshop's delivery logistics with the distribution centers of the entire brick&mortar retail chain? How are you going to expose loyalty card benefits online? How are you going to keep the product catalog in sync with what's in stores?
Like all retail bigcorps, I assume that IKEA has lots of internal systems, half self-cooked, half based on SAP or Oracle or whatnot, that together form the entireity of their operations. These formed long before "microservices" were hip and trendy and will be around long after the hype has died away. The webshop is a part of all that and it must be closely connected to the rest of the IT in lots and lots of places.
So, what you're suggesting is "IKEA should just rebuild their entire product, sales, supply&demand, logistics and finance IT from scratch in a single monolith on a single database". That'd be a fine end-result indeed, but unachievable on any timescale.
- detaro 7y agoI'm sure SAP will gladly spent a few billions of their money trying :D
- alkonaut 7y agoThey don’t need all IT in one service but the web shop needs at least a view of accounts, inventories and so on. That db can be a cached view which means it behaves as a single db with staleness issues (changed passwords or preferences may be stale, you may be able to add things to a cart that appears to be in stock but really is out of stock in the true inventory etc.). It’s better to have such a poorly working illusion of a single db than to have no such illusion at all which means having to log in multiple times etc.