This editorial was originally published on 2 Oct 2015. It is being re-run as Steve is out of the office teaching a precon.

I was reading a post from someone recently where they noted that they didn't worry to much about the architecture of the system since it wouldn't likely last very long. The poster had a comment that many systems are replaced inside of a few years.

In my experience, that's not usually the case. In fact, while I don't expect many applications I've worked on to last for 25 years, I suspect many of them will exist for ten years or more, especially if they are receiving regular development resources. With that in mind, I wanted to see how your databases are faring these days. I suspect a database might last longer than a particular application, as it seems most organizations are loathe to ever let data go.

What's the age of your oldest, regularly used database?

I'm looking for an age in years. If the answer is less than one, I'm not sure I'd call that old at all. I am sure many of your  systems are older, and might have changed, but let us know the year when the system went into production.

I can tell you the SQLServerCentral systems are old in some ways, not so old in others. We've grown from one database to three over the years. The oldest database is circa 2003. Some of the data from that one was migrated to other databases around 2007. We've got data in the system since 2001, but we've certainly changed structures and storage over the years.

I'd guess that most of you that are working in companies that are older than ten years will have a database that's at least that old. However let us know this week, and if you have any interesting notes, feel free to share them.