4 ms·

Every organization I've ever worked at has huge data quality issues. Also, a company's data is one of its most valuable assets, providing financial reporting,

Every organization I've ever worked at has huge data quality issues. Also, a company's data is one of its most valuable assets, providing financial reporting, forecasting, market analysis, and transactional functions. The question I pose, then, is the data available within corporations today of a higher consistency and quality than it would be if all organizations used only key-value stores or a document stores or CSV files? I'm going to venture to say despite the generally abysmal quality of data in large organizations today, it'd be much worse without the tools made available through RDBMS's.

protomyth 17y ago
I'm not so sure. It seems that the shoehorning that is done to get data into the tables cause some problems. I am not sure if it is inherent in the model or just a function of the standard two team arrangement (dev & DBA). The rigid implementation requirements and mismatch with the languages developer use seems to be a problem.
- mattmcknight 17y ago
  The two team arrangement has caused me no end of problems over the past 10 years of my life, beyond shoehorning. The separation of the database team from the development team introduces communication problems, priority mismatches, and fixes done on one side or the other that should have been made on the other side. If you are reading this and you have separate database and development teams, merge them now, or at the least, put control of the schema in the hands of the development team.
- StrawberryFrog 17y ago
  I'm not so sure. It seems that the shoehorning that is done to get data into the tables cause some problems. Possibly. But I shudder to think of what it would be like if there was no powerful standard tool like SQL for essential add-hoc queries and fixes. That is what you'd get with custom file storage. Also the "shoehorning", if done right (normal forms and all that) prevents duplicating information, and all attendant problems.

protomyth 17y ago

I'm not so sure. It seems that the shoehorning that is done to get data into the tables cause some problems. I am not sure if it is inherent in the model or just a function of the standard two team arrangement (dev & DBA). The rigid implementation requirements and mismatch with the languages developer use seems to be a problem.

mattmcknight 17y ago
The two team arrangement has caused me no end of problems over the past 10 years of my life, beyond shoehorning. The separation of the database team from the development team introduces communication problems, priority mismatches, and fixes done on one side or the other that should have been made on the other side. If you are reading this and you have separate database and development teams, merge them now, or at the least, put control of the schema in the hands of the development team.
StrawberryFrog 17y ago
I'm not so sure. It seems that the shoehorning that is done to get data into the tables cause some problems. Possibly. But I shudder to think of what it would be like if there was no powerful standard tool like SQL for essential add-hoc queries and fixes. That is what you'd get with custom file storage. Also the "shoehorning", if done right (normal forms and all that) prevents duplicating information, and all attendant problems.