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Stopping HADES support for 4 database platforms

General
#1

Our OHDSI software is quite remarkable in many ways, including the fact that it supports so many different database platforms. And every few months it seems there’s the newest, latest platform that we simply must support. However, all this support comes at a cost in terms of developer time and energy, so it also good to sometimes cut back scope.

At the start of the year, @Patrick_Ryan announced that we will start to require that a database platform must have user group and testing server for it to continue to be supported. Such a testing server must be available for unit testing, and is essential to guarantee a bug-free experience for our users. Some testing servers are provided by the OHDSI Coordinating Center, but newer ones should be provided by the community. Patrick mentioned July 2023 as the deadline for this requirement, and we have now passed this deadline.

It would still be very good to have user groups for each platform, but for now I’ll focus on testing servers. We have testing servers in some form or another for:

  • Postgres
  • Oracle
  • SQL Server
  • RedShift
  • DataBricks
  • SQLite
  • DuckDB
  • BigQuery
  • SnowFlake

Which means we don’t have testing servers for

  • PDW
  • Netezza
  • Hive
  • Impala

These four platforms will now be deprecated, meaning people can still use the code as is, In the future, support for these platforms will be removed, to not give false impressions of our software’s capabilities.

Looping in @gregk , @lee_evans , @Paul_Nagy

1 Like
A stop on adding new database platform support
#2

Agreed that we cannot support database platforms we don’t have access to. And as Sena said, 9 database platforms is a lot.

I’ll lead the duckdb user group :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

#3

I would argue that 9 is too many. It would not be as bad if they all supported the same base data types, but they do not. This makes making any change very painful.

There is one main offender, in the list of supported DB’s, that refuses to play by industry standards; I will refrain from saying anymore.

#4

@schuemie I agree. This clarifies which database platforms are officially supported for OHDSI software.

#5

@schuemie We need to keep Netezza and Impala as there are active users/organizations that use these dialects in OHDSI. Odysseus team continues supporting these dialects and we will share the test instances for testing purposes. I’ll get in touch with Lee about this and Snowflake accounts.

#6

@Konstantin_Yaroshove : Until we have testing instances, these platforms are designated as ‘deprecated’, meaning we will start warning users not to use them, and there will be no support by OHDSI developers.

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