
into atomic…dware, flashy monitoring systems or DBAs (Okay, maybe having a dedicated DBA would have been nice). Over many years of consulting I have developed a view that the root of all evil lies in the unnecessarily complex data processing pipeline. You don’t need a message queue for ETL and you don’t need an application-layer cache for database queries. More often than not, these are workarounds for the underlying database issues (e.g. latency, poor indexing strategy) that create more issues down the line. In ideal scenario, you want to have all data contained within a single database and all data loading operations abstracted into atomic transactions. My goal was not to repeat these mistakes.
If you’re thinking about starting a company, don’t let the tail wag the dog. Start with the question “how can I deliver value for customers” and work backward from that. Then piece together the open source components you’ll need for your ultimate solutions that deliver value and construct your software supply chain. At this point, you may decide, like Red Hat, that you want the benefits of collaborative developmen…