It represents only one part of my personality but, as testament to the kind of person I am, I like a good database. I've worked with many of them over the years, from just about every major vendor and open source project. I would even go so far as to say that I've worked with some databases that a large percentage of the development community has never even heard of. I've yet to come across anyone who has experience with FirstSQL.
My liking a good database has less to do with the database software itself and more to do with the contents of that database and its structure.
We recently hit, what I would deem to be, some important milestones with the database that supports the Market Intelligence Portal (MIP). Reaching those milestones made me stop a moment to reflect on how the database looked in its fledgling moments many years ago.
We started with some simply constructed tables that focused completely on surveys and key opinion leader to respondent relationships. From those unpretentious beginnings, I've watched one data migration after another shift data from one structure to the next, all the while expanding on the pure and simple concept that we started with. The database has evolved in a way that has preserved the simplicity of its beginnings, while exposing new complexities of the real world entities that it models.
The astounding part is that it continues to grow. Growth in physical database size is obvious and I'm really not talking gigabytes and terabytes when I refer to growth. I refer to growth in the structure. We continue to identify new sources of data that further augment our client's view of their market and the influencers who can help drive it. Despite these new additions, it continues to adapt and be flexible to our changes.
I started this post with a sentence that explained how I like a good database, with an optionally funny poke at myself for being a guy who "likes a good database". I don't think I need to specifically write that the MIP database is one of the "good" ones. At this point, it would seem quite redundant.
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