I want a REAL database.



  • Said gruffly as he stormed out of the data requirements meeting:

    "I think you guys should be using a REAL database and we wouldn't have all this confusion. It's called DB2"

     Yes, in 2013.



  • @amyb said:

    Said gruffly as he stormed out of the data requirements meeting:

    "I think you guys should be using a REAL database and we wouldn't have all this confusion. It's called DB2"

     Yes, in 2013.

    Personally, I agree. DB2 is far better than the existing Excel sheet RDBMS.



  • We asked him if he could just build us a spreadsheet and let us import the data.

    His reply: "No, because I don't want to have to scroll all over the place".

    My assessment: "WTF?!"

     



  • Tangentially related:

    At my former job, we had an "eager" office manager in a remote office somehow link to the tables in an AS/400 system with Microsoft Access and brought the whole system down. That system wasn't my responsibility so I don't really know how he did it, but him saturating a cross-country 10mbps link while doing that was my issue.

    Classic case of knowing enough just to be dangerous.



  • @amyb said:

    Said gruffly as he stormed out of the data requirements meeting:

    "I think you guys should be using a REAL database and we wouldn't have all this confusion. It's called DB2"

     Yes, in 2013.

    How is this a WTF? IBM DB2 has been consistently ranked at the 2nd place (market share, Gartner magic quadrant, etc) after Oracle for maybe 15 or 20 years* and it's in the same cozy spot as we speak, well in front of SQL Server or MySQL. It's a very robust product and is at the core of some of the most successful platform in computing history, including OS/400 and z/OS, and even after IBM bought Netezza it is still well-regarded in the data warehouse industry.

    Maybe there is a confusion between "DB2" and "dBASE" (which may have a .db2 file extension depending on the version). But IBM DB2 is really da shit as far as databases go. While dBASE is technically alive but it's in the same stale bucket at Foxpro or Clipper and has never been a major contender against Oracle or DB2 in the first place.

    * well it did not hurt that IBM bought and killed Informix, their closest challenger



  • I should have elaborated :) DB2 is actually a very good product, but his use of the term in no way refers to the real DB2. 1NF is beyond him. He does not think in relational terms - a flat spreadsheet is his preference, and, probably because his spreadsheets in the past have been imported into DB2, I believe he thinks Excel IS DB2.

    Our little development world revolves around using SQL server and MySQL, and not being a DBA, it is easy to forget about the REAL DB2 the way he bandies the term about.


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