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by Keith Ray.
Original Post: Agile Databases
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I caught part of Scott Ambler's SDExpo talk on database refactorings, and he had lots of comments about integrating DBA's into the developer team(s) for enabling agility, and described a few ways that apps can accessing databases in a decoupled, flexible manner.
He mentioned that another "Y2K" hit the retail industry because UPC numbers are increasing in size. He says that business leaders should recognize that this is a repeat of the Y2K fixed-field-width problem and demand more agile software and database practices from programmers and DBAs. Apparently the fixed-field-width problem is easily avoidable if the apps are written properly. ( See http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DIS/is_3_5/ai_114716526 )
He asked audience members to raise their hands if they could make a simple change (like renaming a column of a table) and re-deploy their database and associated apps in the same day. Only one guy, in a large room filled with database people, raised his hand (I bet that guy worked at Yahoo, Amazon, or Google.) That guy's DB had terabytes of data and 37 apps depending on it, but he could deploy a change in less than one day.
Ambler also asked audience members to raise their hands if their database and associated apps had extensive automated testing. The same guy raised his hand, and maybe one other.
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