Could have been worse.

http://theregister.co.uk/content/archive/30095.html

IBM's DB2 blamed for Danish banking crisis
By Ashlee Vance in San Francisco
Posted: 03/04/2003 at 20:38 GMT

Danske Bank is pointing fingers at IBM's DB2 database as the culprit
for a massive outage that caused the Danish bank's trading desks,
currency exchange and communications with other banks to shut down.

The problems first started on March 10 when IBM's technical division
staff came in to replace a defective power unit in an IBM Ramac
Virtual Array (RVA) storage system. An electrical outage occurred
during the repairs, which caused operations at one of the bank's two
operating centers to come to a halt.

After much work, the system was ready to be restarted and all the
engineers nearby held their breath.

The batch runs began, and tears started to shed. They were not
running correctly.

"Even though the re-start of DB2 database software went normally,
a combination of circumstances was creating inconsistencies in
the data," Danske Bank wrote in its report (pdf) on the debacle.
This first software error in DB2 database software had existed in
all similar installations since 1997, without IBM's knowledge."

Danske Bank worked for three days trying to recover the data with
more and more DB2 failures occurring and slowing the process down.
The database disasters punished the bank for a week and had some
effects on the Danish economy.

One reader said the Nationalbanken was forced to inject 5 billion
kroners into the banking sector to help push transactions through.

Danske Bank has retaliated with its damning take on the affairs but
is not stopping there. The reader says that Danske Bank wants IBM to
pay for direct and indirect damages caused by the crash, which could
amount to 50 million kroners ($7.2 mill USD), according to Danish TV
reports.

Ari Fishkind, a program manager at IBM, declined to comment on such
rumors.

He did, however, say that IBM had worked to solve the problem and
issue fixes for other customers.

"The circumstances that led to this situation were highly unusual and
no other customers have reported a similar DB2 issue," he said.

The bank is pledging to improve its IT systems at a cost of 100
million kroners. It has canned an ad-campaign that stated, "Do what
you do best. That's what we do!"

IBM might also consider pulling a case study in which the company
"Delivers Solid Returns for Danske Bank."

Solid returns indeed. ®

I blame Mary wrote:

> Could have been worse.
>
> http://theregister.co.uk/content/archive/30095.html
>
> IBM's DB2 blamed for Danish banking crisis
> By Ashlee Vance in San Francisco
> Posted: 03/04/2003 at 20:38 GMT
>
> Danske Bank is pointing fingers at IBM's DB2 database as the culprit
> for a massive outage that caused the Danish bank's trading desks,
> currency exchange and communications with other banks to shut down.
>
> <snipped>

So lets all agree that there is no RDBMS, heck there is no software
product period, that doesn't have errors in its code.

And lets also agree that marketing departments are staffed by weasels
(ask Scott Adams if you don't believe me).

And get back to banging code and solving business problems. This is all
just so much meaningless fluff. Everybody gets their moment in the shade.
And Orbitz's problems may just as well be poorly trained staff as
anything else.

--
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/e...ad/oad_crs.asp
damorgan@x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)

"Daniel Morgan" <damorgan@exxesolutions.com> wrote in message
news:3F1829F0.5B0539F@exxesolutions.com...

>
> So lets all agree that there is no RDBMS, heck there is no software
> product period, that doesn't have errors in its code.
>
> And lets also agree that marketing departments are staffed by weasels
> (ask Scott Adams if you don't believe me).

Amen.


> And get back to banging code and solving business problems. This is all
> just so much meaningless fluff. Everybody gets their moment in the shade.
> And Orbitz's problems may just as well be poorly trained staff as
> anything else.

Bingo.

--
Cheers
Nuno Souto
wizofoz2k@yahoo.com.au.nospam