Database Optimization

Hey guys,

My company is undertaking a database optimization project. Optimization the schema, the code, etc. I would like to ask, if you guys could help out, the following:

1. What risks are there? What are the pitfalls?

2. My company is hesitant to do a database freeze and stop all new development until our vendor (who's restructuring tables and changing database objects) has a stable database for us to obtain, then, and only then can we continue development on this newer copy. My question to this: how can we either reduce the database code freeze or work in parallel?

3. Can anyone point me to other sources of information? Another thread? A book? A URL?

Thanks a bunch!

risks include spending time, money, and people on a project that might not have any benefit

pitfalls include making performance worse

but i have to ask: why would you want to optimize a database that a vendor is busy restructuring???

how to reduce the freeze or work in parallel? shouldn't you be asking the vendor for a migration plan for this?

What were the short comings that a redesign is taking place for? Sometimes a DB redesign can do the job but there are other less intrusive options available as gap stop measures to roll out new DB (If needed) in stages.

The aim of this project is refactoring and optimization, through the use of schema changing, stored proc, function, etc. changes. Ideally, we would look at this from the business process level perspective, but that would take too long. It is a big database and doing a rearchitecture based on optimized business processes would be a lenghty project (2-3 years).

So, why do I bring up the db freeze? Because the vendor says it will take 3 months to wrap up his job (he's been working on this for a while now). In those 3 months, we will make many changes of db objects to the current database. Meaning that when the 3 months are up, we can't use that new db right away. We have to now make 3 months of changes workable on the vendor's database. What if then, it takes another 2 months (as opposed to 3 months) to apply those changes to the new database while there is still changes being done to the old database? Those 2 months or changes are implemented to the new database, and yet again it's not synchronized with the old because changes were still taking place.