I keep hearing non-IT folks downplaying the latest ACA malfunction as a mere website glitch. Let me assure you that what you see on a website is the tip of the iceberg, the mere presentation layer as we say in the industry. An application of this nature contains as many layers as a 300-year old California Sequoia. There is first, the webserver layer. A complex labyrinth of Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) applications, enterprise portals, application interfaces, server infrastructure, HTTP and transactional servers etc. And thats just the body on the car, so to speak. Beneath the webserver layer, in any financial system worth its snuff is an application layer, the processing guts of the system, the business logic, algorithms, calculations, containing millions of lines of Java (or heaven forbid COBOL!) code, applets, JavaScript, C++ code or what have you...all of which must grind in perfect harmony like hundreds of instruments in a symphony orchestra, in perfect tune and perfect timing. Third, is the database layer. Here is where your performance rubber meets the road...ask any DBA. Whether Oracle, SQL Server, My SQL, DB2, or Obamacle...your database query language needs to be as polished and tuned as a Stradivarius violin, or your database will be very unforgiving. And...tying all these monolithic components together lets introduce...the security layer, i.e. firewalls, without which, your application will be hacked to pieces in a New York City minute. And to tie it all wonderfully together, lets not forget telecom, the lifeblood of any system. Then, top it off with your client machine, and its montage of browsers, Windows registry settings, drivers, caches, and all the muck, sludge and mire you have sucked off the internet in the last few months. Finally, last but not least, there is...YOU! the clueless shmuck end user...clicking furiously on your mouse when the site hangs, xing out and trying again, and again, and again, leaving open and dead threads to the application and database every time you try, as well as making a horse stable out of your own browser cache. And for those naive non-IT folks who are buying the media parrot-squawk that the site will service everyone who wants to sign up by next month, let me sing you the sad tale of my own personal experience, trying to track down the root cause of ONE SINGLE runaway piece of SQL that brought the entire utilities customer information system to its knees on its own capricious whim for six solid months. Basically, it appears to me that the entire project and system was designed with the IT experience and know-how of my four-year old grandson. Now Micah is a brilliant kid, but hes got a ways to go before hell be designing anything of this nature. But once again, this is the fruit of an undertaking that was rammed through Congress and ramshackled together with spit and bailing wire, which should have been carefully and, I might add, bipartisan-ly crafted with the care the American public deserves. Gosh, if I had just thrown together a billing system and rammed it into live use by saying, We have to install it in production to see if it works, I promise you, Id be out of a job in a minute.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 02:43:28 +0000
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