Re:MongoDB vs Redis, a different interpretation of what's wr...
by silentbicycle on Thursday June 04, 2009 @06:40AM
(#641197)
> DBAs seem to design databases to make programming near impossible.
Have you ever been in a situation where a C buffer overrun caused a data structure to get scribbled over, and instead of crashing, the program just started passing around corrupt data? In a long-running application, that eventually died for a reason that made no sense whatsoever? To the point where you know that noise got in the system, but you don't know where or when, and everything is now suspect?
Imagine that happening to a hospital's medical records. That's a DBA's nightmare scenario. They're not trying to "make programming near impossible", they're trying to systematically prevent (potentially incompetent) programmers from corrupting the data. Databases are good at including internal consistency checks into the schema design itself.
If a programmer new to your project got mad because they kept making asserts or unit tests all over the place fail, and decided to delete them, how would you react?
Have you ever been in a situation where a C buffer overrun caused a data structure to get scribbled over, and instead of crashing, the program just started passing around corrupt data? In a long-running application, that eventually died for a reason that made no sense whatsoever? To the point where you know that noise got in the system, but you don't know where or when, and everything is now suspect?
Imagine that happening to a hospital's medical records. That's a DBA's nightmare scenario. They're not trying to "make programming near impossible", they're trying to systematically prevent (potentially incompetent) programmers from corrupting the data. Databases are good at including internal consistency checks into the schema design itself.
If a programmer new to your project got mad because they kept making asserts or unit tests all over the place fail, and decided to delete them, how would you react?