Michael Leone on Wed, 9 Apr 2003 14:26:09 -0400


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Re: [PLUG] Can Open Source Replace Oracle?


Chris Hedemark said:

> If they can provide you with a temporary read-only account to their
> Oracle server, and the database schema, you should be able to push
> that  to your own machine with no problem if you're sitting on their
> LAN.   That alleviates the internet connection concern, and I'm sure
> they must  have some account they could allow you to use for one day
> to copy the  data.
>
> Or ask them to do an Oracle database dump, put it on CD or tape, and
> you will pay reasonable costs for that search & duplication.  You can

I'm thinking .. if it was that simple, someone would have done it years
ago. He mentions $400 for a copy of such information.

> Anyway, it's moot.  You just want the data, right?  They can give that
>  to you without burning an Oracle license and without burning their
> bandwidth.

And keep giving it to him as periodic updates, if he wants valid data.
Quarterly? Semi-annually?

> Proposal to solve your immediate problem (request for information):
> Ask the City to dump their database to some commonly available format.
>   Unless it is very small, CDROM probably won't cut it.  If they dump
> it

It sure sounds like he wants all land deed/records available to anyone
who wants to look them up. Ordinarily, I would think that would mean the
whole database. Less any fields that should not be made public (office use
only, etc), if they haven't already done that.

The part I don't get is that his article mentions "the equivalent of 3
floppy disks worth of information". Is that right - 4M is the whole
publicly-accessible database of land ownership records? That would seem
like a very small database of properties, or very little information about
a larger number of properties. And Philly has a lot of properties - it is,
after all, still the 6th largest city in the nation. Is that just a
subset?

Is that just the name of the current property owner? No description of
property, no current appraisal info, no transaction history, etc?

And if it's really only 4M, just burn a CD. :-) But since that's not an
option, I presume there must be more to it than that.

> your own use to MySQL or better yet PostgreSQL, let them bang on it a
> bit, and show them that it will hold up they might *MIGHT* consider
> it.

That might overcome a technical consideration, and possibly a
license/cost limitation. There's also (re)training of current staff to
the new database environment, don't forget. I'll guarentee the city
won't forget that little item. :-) Not to mention support contracts with
somebody, to fix it when it breaks in a major way.

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