System scalability — a classic fail (again)

A very long time ago a firm I worked at decided to deploy a new, distributed application to the traders. And in keeping with all the latest ideas the application code was loaded from a common server connected to the trade floor. The idea was simple — code changes would be done to the one copy on the server so anytime anyone signed in they would get the latest and of course greatest…

There was, of course, a small catch in this idea. While loading an application like this from the server is fairly quick, 100 more or less simultaneous logons are a different matter. It took hours and there was serious talk of having some poor clerk come in at 4am to sign on all the workstations so by the time everyone got in their machine was ready to go. It was, I confess, fun to watch the very smart development team confront the fact (with some help) that their clever idea was actually pretty costly.

From talking to my brother-in-law over the weekend it sounds like the medical records system he is required to use for charting was designed by some of the same folk. Logon is 15-20 minutes (this is a doctor sitting there waiting for the system to respond, remember). Record changes takes minutes. The day starts early and ends late due to the ponderousness of the whole application and the multiple layers of signon security built in. Didn’t ask if a chart could be shared — I am almost afraid of the answer.

Problem is that computers are really poor at sharing anything but very good at faking it. Easy to forget, especially in these days of applications with little bits spread all over the landscape. And on local networks, no matter how fast, transfers happen one bit at a time.

The old and much maligned mainframe systems did one thing right — their design sacrificed pretty much everything that slowed down processing and allowed applications to shovel data through at great rates. But these systems required a real understanding of what was going on to design and operate. Not quite as light and fluffy as todays GUI (gooey?) development tools that emphasize simplicity and cute effects for down to the bone functionality.

So we save money on building the code, pat ourselves on the back for what a contemporary, glossy system we have built. And force the highly skilled and not inexpensive people who have to use it to fiddle while waiting for someone’s cleverness to work. Guess this is another case of cost cutting at the wrong end — somehow it seems to me that lifecycle costs for all those high priced users would have been a better optimization target than development. But then they did have a few massive fails getting it off the ground to begin with. Glad the sales folk and the well-connected consulting house management made their commissions. Looks like the rest of us will be paying for this for years.

Forward Into the Past

Thought crossed my mind today, somewhere between the news flier touting propane appliances as the latest ‘green’ technology and the ‘science’ article questioning why people persist in the controversial strategy of even considering nuclear power — that perhaps we should simply declare that the 19th century was really the best of all times and that we are rolling everything back to then. Finish the job of dismantling the grid, stop commercial airplanes and cars, continue to do nothing to hold back the return of highways to the dirt, no more vaccinations — disease is good and culls the population, and so on. Just think… Steam Punk as prescience.

After all, the 19th century robber barons appear to be the model of the ideal contemporary citizen. Social services? A wasteful excess — besides, no one worth taking care of does not have the means to hire their own doctors. Who cares about the others. Not worth mentioning anyhow. Climate change? A myth — besides, there are those ski resorts in Antarctica to consider now that Whistler is getting rain. And if we cut wages enough then maybe our suits and gowns can be tailored here rather than in Hong Kong. And it will be easier to get domestics.

And look at how much money can be made by keeping the world in a perpetual state of regional wars. And provides a sink for the surplus lower classes. The security services will keep the rabble away from the estates anyhow.

And I am sure there will always be some aviation — got to have some way of getting the produce in from South America now that California is going back to desert. Too bad we were so successful in killing off local agriculture. But we can sell all that abandoned land around the wind plants to folks from away and they will bring in their own coolies to till it. As for the huge pile of people in the cities? Heck, they will find ways to cope. After all, ‘Soylent Green’ provided a model.

The kernel of truth in all this is that the strength of the 19th century, as practised in the industrial US anyhow, was that it was as locally self-sufficient as possible. Bringing stuff from away was difficult and expensive so people made due with what was available. Houses used local materials and were designed to suit local conditions, not fashion statements from somewhere else. The local machine shop and pottery made what you needed as did the local woodwright. And most food was local too. Self-reliance, a traditional virtue I think we have largely forgotten.

Nice fantasy. But tough to do when there are sooooo many people and even more to come. Problem is that coping with the world we are making will just not work by rolling back the clock. 21st century problems require 21st century solutions. After all, at one time gasoline was considered too dangerous to use, but we learned. Supporting huge piles of people simply requires huge amounts of power — and there are very few choices available to produce it. We need to stop whining and do some engineering — or the road back to the 19th century will not be pretty.