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Your worst database design experience:
Share it with the rest of us!

Here, you can read stories about Worst Database Design that others have been sharing. And you can share your own story right below:

Your Worst Database Design Experience? Share it here, first-hand!

I'd like to hear your own, personal story about the worst Database Design Experience you've ever had: There are so many projects that have failed miserably due to really bad database "design", and this page will tell the stories. Tell YOUR story, and share your experience with my daily thousands of visitors.

As an extra bonus, each month, I will provide the contribution I value the most in quality/value for all visitors, with a free copy of my eBook on Database Normalization!

Let us all hear your story about your worst database design experience!:

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What Other Visitors Have Said

Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...

Object Relational Overkill  starstarstarstarstar
Perhaps you recognize the architect who thinks everything java is fantastically wonderful, but databases are a lot of trouble.

The java architect ...

sajvargs@gmail.com  starstarstarstarstar
we have developed a web based application for one of the shipping companies in india. this company get clearences from various bodies for the ship operators ...

Inventory system  starstarstarstarstar
I designed a database on SQL server, this is a inventory system and POS System. I stored all Purchase order, Purchase Invoice, Purchase Return, Stock in ...

The worst database as my prespective  starstarstarstarstar
I think that the worst database is which that has redundant data
which lead to increase the database size and decrease the performance

______________________________________________________________________________________
...

Software Engineer   starstarstarstarstar
When I first started at a non-profit medium size organization, with around 250 employees, one of the biggest databases they used at the time, was designed ...

Oracle Developer  starstarstarstarstar
I was hired as a developer on a "mature" project, still running on Forms & Reports 6.0 (not 6i) in 2006. My job consisted of fixing problems in a ...

relationships - that doesn't hurt  starstarstarstarstar
A huge company, a huge and terribly expensive system. About 300 tables in db wihout any relationships. They were substituted by triggers. Nice?

Ranges of Ids  starstarstar
In the company I am working for my boss refuses to believe surrogate keys shouldn't be a range of numbers for different objects.

I.e. 4000-4999 for ...

Using a Sequence instead of a year number  starstarstar
Using a Sequence instead of a year number: I just have to tell you this one:

While working as a DB QA manager in a large DB project, upon revision of ...

Trainee  star
composite primary key

hdr table PK - > hdr ID
item table PK - > item ID

Line table PK -> hdr ID , item ID

This will create several issues. In ...

collecting requirement badly  Not rated yet
We collected requirement for an assetmanagement company.
We created admin screens, user profile screens, data entry screens and got signoff. After collecting ...

seperate schema per customer with duplicate database objects in each  Not rated yet
I worked as a DBA for a company that provided a custom application that ran on a single server and database instance. The company had several clients ...

What is SQL. Let's Google it.  Not rated yet
First of all. I like al the articles.

My story is one that is still happening today.

I started my career at a Dutch company as a System Administrator....

please guide me as a teacher  Not rated yet
Hi
In our database I have a table as history.History table contains columns as hdate,events,birthdays,deaths and others.The table does not have primary ...

Transport Management System(Bus Pass Facility)  Not rated yet
I have designed master tables without primary key. I checked for the uniqueness of the value for the master tables in business logic before inserting the ...

Look in the OLD fields  Not rated yet
We have a vendor who's wonderful software is written in COBOL with a semi-relational structure (the relationships are not enforced and cannot be relied ...

My Fault  Not rated yet
When designing my first several databases, I asked the client if any field, item or bit of information about the data in the table was ever going to be ...

Hornet's Nest  Not rated yet
I worked in the IT department of a software firm in Canada for several years on a project designed using Visual Basic 6 and Oracle 7. The application'...

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