Is it hard to learn Oracle?

[TriPolar]

@Chessic_Sense

@TriPolar

Among other things, how do you verify that the new system is operating properly?

I would have thought that that’d be trivial. Can’t I just write a record and see if it updates the table? What’s wrong with that approach?

Let me give you an analogous situation so you know more about what we do. Suppose someone gave you a list of phone numbers. Let’s say those phone numbers are campaign contributors. We take those numbers and fill out the rest of the form for that number, like who owns it, what phone company it’s through, what address it leads to, how long it’s been active, etc. We write all that down in a spreadsheet and ship that off to the client. Then that client uses the data to, I don’t know, target their charity solicitations better.

So those phone numbers come to us in an Excel spreadsheet. I made the database because I thought it’d be easier on the eyes and also because it allows us all to work on those phone numbers in real time instead of having someone glue all these sheets back together again.

But as you might expect, more than one person is interested in the data on those numbers. All of a sudden, telemarketers go “Hey, can I take a peek at those numbers? I want to know when they’ll be home.” and radio stations want to know who keeps prank calling them…that sorta thing.

So now we’ve got a lot of people asking for info and we figure it’ll be easier to just let them access the database themselves. The boss heard from another department that they have an Oracle-based program, so she wants to steal that, and thus came to me.

That’s why I want to know if I can actually handle it.

If its that simple, you should not have any serious problems, other than to your company’s bottom line. Many applications have year-end reports, and until you go through the process of generating those reports with real data, you may have problems that are undetected until then. Without constraints of that nature, conversions are much simpler.

You still have the questions about verifying that all of your data has been converted properly. Do you a validation method that can be applied to every record? You also have to consider all variations of data that might be stored in a field, and result of optional fields. Plus you still have backup procedures to develop and verify. And anything that appears as a difference in the user interface, even if it has no operational significance will likely come back to you as a database problem. Not to mention the usual user mistakes blamed on the computer.

I assume your company has already committed to the deal, but if you wanted to go through the effort, you could easily show how maintaining your current system, or switching to any of a variety of alternate low costs solutions, will win a cost/benefit analysis over Oracle. If you want to go through that effort, send me a PM, I’ll help you out. You should continue to get suggestions for practical alternatives in this thread.

[RaftPeople]

@Chessic_Sense

…The boss heard from another department that they have an Oracle-based program, so she wants to steal that, and thus came to me.

If the program already exists then it sounds like 1 problem is eliminated, now you just need to worry about installation and ongoing maintenance.

I would recommend you spend a few dollars and hire a contractor to get the install right. Then use that person on an as needed basis for maintenance guidance (in addition to books/classes).

[J_Cubed]

@Chessic_Sense

@TriPolar

Among other things, how do you verify that the new system is operating properly?

I would have thought that that’d be trivial. Can’t I just write a record and see if it updates the table? What’s wrong with that approach?

:eek:

@Chessic_Sense

Let me give you an analogous situation so you know more about what we do. Suppose someone gave you a list of phone numbers. Let’s say those phone numbers are campaign contributors. We take those numbers and fill out the rest of the form for that number, like who owns it, what phone company it’s through, what address it leads to, how long it’s been active, etc. We write all that down in a spreadsheet and ship that off to the client. Then that client uses the data to, I don’t know, target their charity solicitations better.

So those phone numbers come to us in an Excel spreadsheet. I made the database because I thought it’d be easier on the eyes and also because it allows us all to work on those phone numbers in real time instead of having someone glue all these sheets back together again.

But as you might expect, more than one person is interested in the data on those numbers. All of a sudden, telemarketers go “Hey, can I take a peek at those numbers? I want to know when they’ll be home.” and radio stations want to know who keeps prank calling them…that sorta thing.

So now we’ve got a lot of people asking for info and we figure it’ll be easier to just let them access the database themselves. The boss heard from another department that they have an Oracle-based program, so she wants to steal that, and thus came to me.

That’s why I want to know if I can actually handle it.

I’m just going to go ahead and give you this link now:
http://thedailywtf.com/Default.aspx

You’ll thank me some day.