My boss—a biologist—told me to buy Oracle. Me: What is Oracle, exactly? Boss: It’s a database. Me: Why do we want it? Boss: We have data. We have to put it in a database. Me: I don’t think so. Boss: Our data is important. Don’t argue, just go buy it. It should cost $10,000. 1/2
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I drive to Oracle HQ and ask to talk to someone who can tell me what it is. Sales guy: So, how much of it do you want? Me: What is it? S: It’s Oracle. Everyone has to have it. Me: But what does it do? S, irritated: Look, how much do you want to buy? 2/n
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David Chapman Retweeted Patrick McKenzie
Me: How much does what configuration cost? What do the different versions do? Sales: You don’t seem to understand. Go ask your boss how much he wants. Me: OK, so what would I get for $10,000? Sales: Great! We’ll send you an invoice. 3/nhttps://twitter.com/patio11/status/1029113225659408384 …
David Chapman added,
Patrick McKenzie @patio11Since they don't mention this in school: you can ask for the budget. People will routinely disclose it to you. Sales folks get good at doing this without anyone getting the impression they're being rude, partially because this isn't rude and partially because delivery matters. https://twitter.com/FreelanceWars/status/1029014684161196032 …Show this thread2 replies 0 retweets 31 likesShow this thread -
Two months later, my boss informs me that Oracle has arrived and I have to put data in it. It is wheeled into my office, where the manuals take up two complete bookshelves and there is a box of CD-ROMs fills the space under my desk. (This is 1994, by the way.) 4/n
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I still have no idea what it is, and a day randomly poking through the manuals proves entire uninformative. Time to go to a bookstore (remember those?) and get Oracle For Idiots. Reading between the lines, I discover it maintains a finite set of tuples. You are joking?
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It takes $10,000, 60 pounds of manuals, and 25 pounds of CD-ROMs to keep track of tuples? It took me another decade to figure out why. (Hint: not because you couldn’t do it in 1/100 as much code.) I never did put any data in it, but my boss was greatly reassured we had it. n/n
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Replying to @Meaningness
out of curiosity, what was your eventual data management solution? in 2018 I'd toss it all in a PostgreSQL instance for $0/mo (excluding hardware/hosting costs) and call it a day. In 1994 that wasn't an option though.
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Flat files. Was all we needed at the time. [Thought I’d replied to this before, but I can’t find my tweet]
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Replying to @Meaningness
thanks for the reply! suspect as much. how did you manage indexing? I have this feeling that any attempt to build out a flatfile store ends up building at least half an RDBMS by the time you're finished anyway.
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Replying to @danlistensto
There really wasn’t much data. I can’t remember details, but the whole thing was probably two pages of code.
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End of conversation
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