Awesome letters

Thank you for sending me awesome comments. Here are my favourites:

Name: Edward

I'm using grep and find and the Unix file system

Name: Rob

Dear Howfuckedismydatabase.com, I was using your website to establish a baseline level of fuckedness for my managers, however, as I was saddened by the lack of detail provided in final assessment. For example, my expectation was that my level of fucked with be a more linear type scale as opposed to a Boolean like representation of fucked or not. If I try to take this report to my management that is simply a 'fucked' status or 'not fucked' status, I will surely be scoffed at they tend to not be so black/white about things. I hope into the future you either a manager type interface with more detail, or allow me to enter more variables to help establish a percentage like rank of fucked. Thanks, -Rob

Name: Travis

This site has enlightened me greatly, but my company uses Pervasive SQL Summit versions 2000i (7.9) through 10.3 at various client locations, and I'd like allow my coworkers the opportunity to find out the status of these databases. Is there any chance of adding this to your pick list, or will we have to continue to just assume that the databases are mildly to moderately fucked?

Name: Matthew

This totally made my day -- I just setup Slony a few days ago and you were spot on. Cheers! :-)

Name: Laurent

Nothing to add, just awesome! =)

Name: Justin

I loved everything about this.

Name: Paul

It would be totally awesome to see this in the awesome emails section!

Name: Toni

Why do you need a database? I'm using CSV files!

Name: Geoff

I have to work with a fucked filemaker db, and was not able to use your tool to help communicate the fuckedness of the db.

Name: Matt

My company uses SQL Server, but only to query the linked Oracle server that stores the data coming from an AS400 mainframe. Since we aren't running a nuclear reactor, the company is willing to spend millions (regardless of the actual amount available to spend), and mainframes aren't on your list (obviously indicating a complete lack of fuckedness), I assume we're okay, right?

Name: furicle

After reviewing your site, I'm so glad we are sticking with emailed Excel spreadsheets for our mission critical database requirements.

Name: Adrian

Databases? Fuck that. I use Excel's pivot tables.

Name: Sean

So we used to use Access for our web databases. I showed management your page as proof that our databases were truly Massively Fucked. Your presentation was clear, unequivocal, and INCREDIBLY LARGE. Thank you very much for saving the world (or at least the personal information of 25,000 students). Regards, Sean F. Web Developer

Name: Carlos

I came after a long journey to your website to seek enlightenment : am I fucked? And it didn't answer that question clearly. Let me re-phrase it: I first search an LDAP directory, then I remotely execute a quota status, after that I query a PostgreSQL database, and then I generate a .txt file with the timestamp as its name or a .csv file with an hash as its name, and then I look up the files from a web page, load it all to a multi-dimensional array, and generate a nice report, re-loading the entire file every time the user wants to, say, sort by another field. Something this complex can't ever possibly fuck up, can it?

Name: NotaDBA

I know someone locally who uses MS File 1.0 on a Mac IIci running System 7.1 to maintain student records. Yes, MS File, not a 32-bit clean app, so the OS AND MS File have to run in 8 MEGABYTES of RAM. Yes, I know it's 2010. Yes, I know Apple discontinued the IIci in February, 1993. Yes, she's insane. AND inflexible.

Name: Inti

I have about 1.32 GB worth of XML files, how fucked up would that be?

Name: Bryan

Dude, seriously funny. Practically peed myself when I read the MySQL entry mid-sip of coffee.

Name: soumadri

I use XQuery. no SQL at all. I hate SQL. Angle brackets are good enough for me.

Name: Bill

Thank you for providing a valuable service to the community. At least I can laugh while pulling my hair out.

Name: Jon

Doesn't HTML5 fix this?

Name: Phil

What can a database do that multi-dimensional arrays and nested for loops can't?

Name: George

Thank goodness I went to library school. Card catalogs totally rock. Downtime is nonexistent and power consumption extremely low.



Backups can be a bitch, though.

Name: Mike

Regarding NoSQL, I created some Facebook accounts and input my data using the status update textfield. Now I'm however a bit confused. Is there a tutorial on how to write the Erlang function?

Name: Tim

I was looking for the end of the internet, but I found this instead. You are truly enlightened! I believe anyone, young or old, big or small, rich or poor, a single man or a enterprise, a shaman or a government, need to know where they stand with their database. I will send all my friends, neighbors, colleagues, strangers, enemies, to this site so they too can see the light.

Name: Nick

I hire foreign labour. They can usually remember a tuple or two each. Hell, it's cheaper than Oracle!

Name: Bolt

At first I was disappointed that you didn't include DB2 in your risk analysis metric. Then I realized that due to IBM's "pureXML" technology, with which you can store the back end of the database in an XML file, there is no possible way that the database could become fucked.

Name: Lesley

Thanks for the laughs. The letters add an extra dimension of awesomeness too. Who did you hire to write them?

Name: Michael

I work for an organisation that uses MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, SQLite and MS Access. When calculating total fucked value should I add or multiply?

Name: Bob

Was just wondering if you could store this list for me in your comments page.

*start pizza dropdown*

Ham,Cheese,Tomato,Onion,Olive,Anchovies

*end pizza dropdown*

I can screen scrape your comments page if I need to get at my data.

Name: tamale

*start pizza dropdown*

just wanted to fuck with the previous commenter's parsing algorithm

Name: Kobol

So, what's this database deal? I mean, I'm using magnetic tapes to store data and is blazing fast! It only takes like two days to find a record, I hope this is some kind of weird hype, like that internet thingy. For redundancy and security, we just buy lots of tapes and train ninjas to guard them. Ninjas are cool. "Databases", not.

Name: Vinicius

Now with the enlightenment of your site I keep MySQL databases that I query running without problems. Since I'm a Unix admin, I'm piping through grep all my SELECTs just to retrieve the information that I need. It's much easier and safe to do a SELECT * FROM table | grep valueThatINeed. Thanks for your help!

Name: Zash

Shouldn't MySQL redirect to Oracle now?

Name: Chris

Hi there, I'm running Lotus Notes. Obviously I'm fucked, my question is whether it counts as a database or not. thanks, A.D.

Name: John M

I am unhappy with your service. I came to the Internet to vent my frustration about the shittiness of sqlite, which I am forced to use for Android development, whereby I keyed into Google the search term "fuck sqlite". Your site, sir, tells me that because I am but one user on my smartphone, that I am, in your words "to keep up the good work". Do you know that sqlite stores dates as text? Or numbers? Or whatever the fuck it feels like? My next search term shall be "fuck howfuckedismydatabase.com". Bitch.

Name: Bruce

As a developer, DBA, performance tuner, teacher, and all around IT professional I commend you for the most succinct and elegant (not to mention accurate) summary of the pros and cons of various database solutions I have ever seen. Thank you. You have saved me a lot of time explaining obfuscatory details to managers and potential customers.

Name: Roland

You said "good luck" to concurrent access with sqlite. I had the (mis)fortune of working on a project where they "fixed" this by copying the database when it gave a locked error, then had a timer callback to repeatedly try and merge the two databases back together, which works, most of the time. It's been in production running a billion dollar smelter for years...

Name: Chad

Love this site... your assessment of the various databases out there is pretty accurate. My only concern is...I don't understand how an Access book from Amazon will in any way, shape or form, "unfuck" your database. I feel like this is seriously misleading people who have to work with abomination of a database and it is in a lot of ways, down right cruel. Imagine some poor soul sitting in the middle of a cubicle farm, battered and bruised from trying to address a never ending stream of support tickets. Ao out of desperation...perhaps their last and only hope... to find a cure to all of their woes... they find this site. They see they are just completely fucked and hopeless. Truth hurts, but it needs to be said. But alas! There is a link below! A magical link! "Try to unfuck your database". Eureka! The answer!! Sweating in anticipation, they click the link and they are taken to... a book?? on Access?? WTF??? THESE PEOPLE DO NOT NEED ANOTHER BOOK ON A FUCKED UP DATABASE! They probably already have a bookshelf lined with them. What these poor souls need is some courage to find another damn job! A new career is the only way out of this situation! So my suggestion is to not be so cruel and to do these people a better service by directing them somewhere that can help them start a new and fulfilling career. For example: http://www.careershif ters.org/expert-advice/how-to-change-career-when-you-have-no-idea-what-youre-doing I mean, seriously man...wtf. A book?!

Name: Tom

I think Apache Hive would be a great addition to your site. I've been using it the past couple days and at this point I'm pretty sure Hive is a large practical joke, a new type of trolling where you release software with intentional spiked pits for people to fall in. For example, they support setting "LINES TERMINATED BY" but the only valid value is a newline character https://community.hortonworks.com/questions/6808/hive-support-for-line-terminator-other-than-n-when.html . Its like writing a CSV library that only supports tab delimited files.

Name: James

Given you don't mention DB2, I can only assume that you actually work for IBM, and therefore I think you'll find that it's _you_ that is fucked (and your database).