[turba] horde db shortcomings

[Eric S. Johansson]

Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:

> That's very sound advice.  Could you point to one of your open
> source projects with its 'guaranteed not to fail script' so that it
> can be used by Horde as well? 

that is very project dependent.  For example, on the IPCop firewall, 
various utilities and CGI programs we use lead the user to do the right 
thing.  As a result, we now have a firewall that can be set up by 
midlevel manager with a modicum of network knowledge and about 15 to 30 
minutes.  The worst case is setting up a VPN firewall to firewall which 
takes about 30 minutes to an hour per node.  The new road warrior code 
should make road warrior configurations a 30 minute proposition.

When I'm done with camram, it will be in antispam gateway that needs 
four bits of information and then autoconfigures users based on their 
feedback.  Today, it's still a bag of parts.

In each of these cases, the script writer has paid attention to the 
problem domain and the kind of problems users experience.  You cannot 
get it right in one but instead you need to evolve it over time because 
as one problem is solved, a new one appears.

While this approach is not as exciting as new features, software that 
just installs with a minimal amount of knowledge should be a bragging 
point, not avoided at any cost.

> You'll notice that Horde does not 'include a database', which is precisely
> the point ... it supports a great many different varieties.  I'm afraid
> it's up to you to learn how to assemble the different components to
> solve your particular problem (which is pretty different from the details
> of my own setup I imagine).

bad choice of words on my part.  If you are going to use a database and 
include any documentation for a particular variety of database then it 
should state basic assumptions and make sure supplied code works. 
otherwise no database scripts should be supplied in the user should be 
left to enter what ever schema was required manually.  supplying scripts 
that cannot work right is actually worse than the second option.

> If you don't want to do this setup, I'm sure you can find a consultancy
> outfit more than willing to assemble it for you for a modest fee.

it's never a modest fee.  and I have to be able to teach others how to 
maintain this thing without calling on me all the time.  It's the rare 
consultancy that sees this kind of task as a one shot job instead of a 
lifetime meal ticket.  It's like the rent-an-IT-department outfits.  As 
a rule, they will sell solutions that maximize their billable hours 
instead of what's right for the customer because they live or die by the 
billable hour.  Notice what OS and applications they tend to use. ;-)


---eric


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