October 2008
Intermediate to advanced
352 pages
10h 30m
English
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Chapter 4. Database As a Fortress
If you ask a bunch of CEOs what their company’s greatest asset is, most will tell you it’s their people. That certainly sounds nice. It may even be true for companies that don’t deal with data. However, if a CEO who works for a company based around a website says people are her greatest asset, she is definitely lying. Great people got the company where it is today, but now that it’s a success, the most important asset is the data that has accumulated. If Edwards, your super-star coder, gets hit by a bus, it will take you six to eight weeks to train Henderson or Stevens or Erikson to replace him. However, if you have a data meltdown—one that creeps in slowly, undetected at first, until all your precious data is turned to garbage—be prepared to start over from scratch. Not even your backups can help, because they’re all corrupt, too.
The most important asset of a web-based company is its data. The most obvious type of data to protect is operational data. If you sell goods online, your site is useless if the product descriptions don’t match the products. If you run a social networking site, who will come back if the network links get lost, crossed, or lead to user pages that no longer exist? What good is an online personal information management tool if your to-do list items disappear before you get to check them off yourself?
Historical data corruption is another common and insidious problem. Imagine if you could no longer report on how many units of ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.