DB refactoring Re: [AM] [dm-discuss] ZZZ Farewell Fellow Agilists

Rich makes good points, the coupling with other stuff really is the 
problem.  Reloading and testing can be a bit of work, but it's pretty 
straightforward once you get good at it.

Choosing to dig yourself out of your legacy hole is a hard decision to 
make, but you need to do it eventually.  Encapsulating DB access is an 
important first step in doing so.  Too many DA/DW folks like to claim that 
"developers just don't understand the big picture like we do, you can't do 
this stuff in our environment."  And you know what, they're absolutely 
right -- with that attitude you can't do agile stuff in their 
environments.  But, if you choose to deal with the problem, and recognize 
that you have a multi-year problem on your hands, you can in fact dig your 
way out of the hole.

- Scott

At 09:09 AM 2/3/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>The biggest problem we have in refactoring databases is not the time it 
>takes to reload or to test. That is actually trivial (even with very large 
>databases). Rather it is the coupling between the databases and the 
>programs that use them. Where I work, we have 30 years of coupling program 
>code directly to databases, and as a result any change to a database can 
>affect hundreds of programs. As a result we cannot get agreement from 
>developers to refactor in small steps.
>
>Where we can we have abstracted the database away from code using data 
>modules, which has helped. But even that gets a great deal of pushback due 
>to having to rework the original programs to use the modules.
>
>I cannot speak for any other data folks, but one of the biggest reasons we 
>have for a lack of agility in our operational systems (I keep saying that 
>because we are doing a little better on the DW front, I'm a little 
>defensive) is the fact that changes to the databases ripple back into the 
>mass of legacy programs. We're migrating toward a more flexible situation, 
>but we have a huge amount of inertia to contend with.
>
>Rich
><snip>

====================================================
Scott W. Ambler
Senior Consultant, Ronin International, Inc.
www.ronin-intl.com/company/scottAmbler.html

www.agiledata.org
www.agilemodeling.com
www.ambysoft.com
www.enterpriseunifiedprocess.info
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www.ronin-intl.com

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