It thankfully didn't take two years, but I've brought sanity to a messy database by: 1. reverse-engineering its schema into code 2. simplifying that code, and

It thankfully didn't take two years, but I've brought sanity to a messy database by: 1. reverse-engineering its schema into code 2. simplifying that code, and migrating the data regularly Code has been pretty malleable, making it easy to factor in common patterns, erase accidental complexity, and generally bring commonality where there was discordance. It is also easy to version control, and to generate migrations from. (I have no argument that PostgreSQL is the only sane database, but portable ORMs can be used to ease migration towards Postgres, too)