Question

Need of Indexes and primary keys in a table

Asked by: mfarid2

I am working on a project at a client where the database is in unbelievably bad shape. There are no primary keys on the tables and no indexes. No proper relationships. The same field is called with different names in different tables. I would like  to write a document explaining the whole scenario and what benefits would an improvement would bring. They are in a business where they are releasing later version of software on this database and I feel that there is no way they can sustain this business this way. Any comments would be helpful.

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Asked On
2002-12-02 at 13:25:27ID20413207
Topic

Oracle Database

Participating Experts
4
Points
50
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: gmyersPosted on 2002-12-02 at 14:14:52ID: 7522224

"There are no primary keys on the tables and no indexes. No proper relationships. The same field is called with different names in different tables."

These are all 'technicalities' and there's no reason the 'business' should be interested in them.

Suggestions to the 'business' managers should be in business terms.

EG.
"I took a copy of the database.
I loaded up the June sales figures.
Then I loaded them up again, the sort of mistake that can easily be made if some-one goes off sick.
I then produced the financial projections and, see, we'd be buying an extra $100,000 of widgets if we used these forecasts.
We can put controls in place to make sure this can't happen."
or
"We can make changes that will get the December data out in time for the January report...without overtime"

Tell them how much the changes will cost to put in.
It may be the data(base) is so unimportant to them, they don't care.




 

by: viswapspPosted on 2002-12-02 at 14:27:58ID: 7522266

Hi mfarid2,
There is no way except convincing the higher officials what you have found.

This is the case at some of the places I worked. But, you need to understand the business very well, before you do any thing. Otherwise the blame will be on you. Please keep this in mind.

I have seen some places where the effective date and termdate not used at all properly (though they exist on tables) apart from no relationships and indexes.

Have a version control, so that you can have proper backups (also onto the tapes, in case any crashes).
Have the higher officials not to grant more than required privileges to any level.

Also, you have to have a design document how the process flow is done.

Document every thing you are doing.

All the best.

 

by: markagPosted on 2002-12-03 at 04:59:21ID: 7525011

All the above applies, as well as explaining to them in no uncertain terms (remember, they hired you to do this!) how poorly the database health is, and they run the very real risk of crashing their entire business because of it. That usually scares the crap out of upper management, and gets them to 'do the right thing' long term. Anyone tells them different, simply suggest they take the ball and run with it their way and you'll be waiting for their phone call in the near future...

DOCUMENT IT and make sure it gets in the hands of the right technology people in the company.

 

by: wes_wilsonPosted on 2002-12-03 at 12:23:13ID: 7527299

All valid approaches, if you want to opt for a more subtle approach, I would really beat on the indexes and primary key drum myself as follows.  Column naming, data integrity and general design are always very difficult to push because they aren't visible to the business and no one cares until they break something.  However, if they don't have indexes and primary keys, you can probably copy some of the tables, index them appropriately, run some of the queries from their apps against these "corrected" tables and show them a side by side comparison of what they have with what they could have from a performance standpoint.  This is usually a huge eye-opener for clients and their managers.  This a) Shows you know what you are talking about, b) shows that the people who have been doing the database don't know what they are doing c) Demonstrates you have the ability to do what you are talking about, d) gives you the credibility to make a case for the less tangible improvements such as naming columns correctly, enforcing foreign keys, etc.

If they still don't listen then I advocate markaq's recommendation, make it well known that its wrong, you tried to remedy it and you aren't responsible for when it busts.  

BTW  You may be really surprised by how poorly a system can be put together and still let a business function from it.  I've seen some really nasty ones, including databases where you had to parse out digits in the center of a string to find out what table to join to, lol and they didn't even index these either.  (And this was a commercial "best of breed" supply chain product)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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