I am working on a project to redesign/ redo an application. The problem is that the old application was written in ASP.net 1.0 and the database is pretty large over 100 tables and 300 odd views.The database handles roles and membership in a very shoddy way. It involves a simple workflow too. The app is pain when it comes to maintainence. I have around 3-4 months to redo the software.
The DB design is not to my liking but looking at timeframe migrating data and DB redesign may make the project go off track.
Anyone ran into this situation before?? Any one has any pointers for me as to how to go about this project??
I would love to get the software up to speed with .NET 3.5 . I am not sure if App redesign would be meaningful without considering the DB
Problem with system: 1. Maintainence and scalability issues. 2. Poor DB design specially in case of user management, the app depends heavily on users and roles etc.
Database redesign is a huge effort. If you or someone on your team is not an expert in database design and ETL, you could end up with a worse mess than you have now.
However, is it possible to perhaps fix just the one or two worst parts of the database and thus achieve an improvement overall? Look at the worst performing queries to see what is really wrong (not just from your personal perspective of what you dislike but what really isn’t working well now). Maybe something less than a total redesign could give you a major performance boost.
If the reason you dislike the database is that it is not truly relational, it is possible you could compromise by putting in relational tables with new names, moving the data and dropping the old tables, and creating views with the old table names that are structured like the current design. (Do not do without a current datbase backup first!!!!) That way you can start to change code to the new more effective design but the stuff you don’t get changed will still work until you get to it.