Changing State

Agile Provisioning

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

This is the first in a series of posts that will present how production database systems (and dependent systems) can be changed over time without breaking clients that access the database, and how to communicate these changes to the interested parties. While database professionals can easily see how change is required in the schema [...]

Oops - What Just Changed? Production Downtime Ensues.

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

There is a story circulating describing how the VA had a simple issue cascade into a full day of production downtime. We can learn from their failures! The initial problem turned out to be an improperly executed change in port numbers, but they wouldn’t determine that until much later. There was no visibility into [...]

Great Art != Great Databases

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

A great piece of art has many characteristics, including uniqueness. Great works created of ceramic tiles have many different shapes and colors with pieces fitting together perfectly, as per required by the design. Some tiles may be cut into odd shapes while others are positioned on an angle or placed inside other sections. [...]