PMDV: Lessons Learned

On Monday I "released" Version 0.1. Not only did I blog about it, I sent private emails to people I know asking them to take a look. I'm going to summarize the good and the bad here.

SYS
I had planned all along to put the objects in the SYS schema as Oracle treats it differently. By differently I mean that it's more secure than any other user/schema. You cannot create objects in the schema as another user, even with DBA privileges. Same goes for executing code, you need an explicit GRANT from SYS in order to run a package. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but around on or after 9i, DBMS_SESSION needed to be granted explicitly to users.

What's the lesson learned? Well, if you create objects in the SYS schema you now have an unsupported database. Yikes. I don't want that to happen and I will be updating the instructions tonight to reflect that (not that anyone has gone and thrown it in production yet).

What's in a Name?
Poor Man's Data Vault was not the best choice of names. I knew that all along really, but stuck with it just because. Someone suggested that the general concept might be related a bit more to Audit Vault; my only exposure to it was at COLLABORATE.

If there are any good ideas out there, let them fly. The only constraint? You have to use the letters P, M, D and V. Why? Because I've prefixed everything with that. :)

Documentation
Documentation is hard, but I tried to get down as much as possible on the wiki. A friend and former colleague (twice), told me it sucked. It wasn't very descriptive or clear as to the purpose. I don't think it sucked, but it wasn't good or even great. Mediocre maybe?

Reason for Being
Maybe writing software is hard? Not the coding part necessarily, all the "extraneous" stuff. Documentation. User Expectations. Documentation. Testing (what?). Documentation. Critiques.

Despite the "smallness" of the project, I have a better appreciation for what Jake talks about over at the AppsLab. I can only imagine what it's like doing it at that scale.

Final Thoughts
I think I will continue on with the project.

I believe the goals have changed a bit so I'll need to adjust. Actually, I'll need to refactor my goals.

I will try to use the criticism wisely and allow that the help shape the new goals.

I'll have to change the target audience...well, define one. I had bigger shops (multiple DBAs) in mind initially or a place that needed to be SOX compliant. Maybe it should be small or medium size shops? I don't know.

Don't be afraid to leave comments, good and bad.