Best of the ISP-Lists

Every Host Needs a Base

Members of the ISP-Webhosting list delve into the questions raised by a customer who wants to build a database of inventory for a furniture company that owns several outlets.

[August 26, 2002]

On the ISP-Webhosting list in August, NM inquired,

"I have a client who owns a furniture company with seven store locations and $5 million in inventory. He needs an extensive centralized web database in MS Access with a manager login. How should I price this?"

A number of respondents suggested checking out some other database options:

[MK advised] "I would use anything but MS Access."

[KB agreed] "Do not use MS Access for this. If you're going to be putting the data for seven stores and millions of dollars of inventory into a database, you should be using MS SQL."

[JM added] "Also consider MySQL, which is free of licensing costs."

[MB noted] "And of course there are others such as Sybase and Oracle out there."

[MG offered] "Check out SAP DB. It's extremely powerful and scalable, has lots of features-and it's free. It's closer to Oracle than anything else."

[DP countered] "I prefer FairCom, because their licensing is a tad more reasonable than either Sybase or Oracle, and it's more stable than MySQL."

NM brought the topic back to pricing:

"So what should I charge? I came up with a rough estimate of $8,000, figuring on approximately two weeks at $100 per hour. Am I way off?"

Many respondents noted that there a lot of factors to consider when looking at pricing:

[ML noted] "It depends on the scope of the functionality you wish the database to support: I would think you could spend two weeks just designing a database schema and the functionality around it before you write too much code. Will the database be able to interact with his suppliers? How are the stores going to interact with the database? HTTP? A custom application?"

"I think you'll find that two weeks is very, very conservative. I have worked on many large development projects with teams of 10 to 30 developers, and I have found that nothing comes in on time or budget. Just make sure that you have the complete scope of the project in writing, that your customer signs off on what will be delivered, and then, for every change he makes, complete a change form that provides time and cost estimates of the change."

[JM agreed] "Ultimately, the cost of the project will come down to the needed functionality. Until you've got a spec, you may as well pull numbers out of a hat. And don't be overly surprised after you've got that spec down on paper if you get quotes from different developers that vary by as much as ten times."

KB recommended outsourcing as a way to significantly decrease costs:

"Consider outsourcing the database to a reputable hosting company rather than spending the money on setting up a server in-house. Your data will be protected and backed up by the hosting company daily, and an outsource host could save you some big money. $8,000 is a ballpark figure for a standalone MS SQL box all by itself. That does not incude development costs—and you can buy a ton of hosting time for $8,000."

—End