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Rename Database to DBA, create blocked-by-schema-change
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Description

There are many problems with the #Database tag. It is confusing, and many people do not differenciate it from MediaWiki-libs-Rdbms. I want to rename #Database to DBA, (we can keep the alias) and make sure that we differenciate between tasks involving mediawiki code related to relational storage (done mostly by mediawiki hackers), and work on WMF MySQLs (done mostly by WMF operators).

In addition, schema changes are not as easy to be done as before. I think Schema-change can continue existing for proposed changes in mediawiki infrastructure, but we need another project to mark "this schema change is final, apply it to WMF infrastructure now". Thus I propose #Blocked-by-schema-change, with a similar spirit than Blocked-on-Operations. I think DBA should be a subcomponent (blue) (or a team?). Blocked-on-Operations should be a yellow or red tag.

The rationale and workflow has been documented on https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schema_changes/Coordination_proposal and many people has already agreed to follow it, unblocking many pending changes. I want to officialize it.

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Hm, I wonder if "Blocked-on-schema-change" should be clearer, to make it obvious that it applies to WMF infrastructure only?

Aklapper triaged this task as Medium priority.Nov 27 2015, 12:32 PM

It should be Schema-change-in-production to keep the naming scheme we have and has to be a yellow tag.
Also, the description of "Database" to be renamed to "Wikimedia-DBA" (I'd slightly prefer that for clarity) in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/1060/ needs clarification.
Apart from that it sounds very good.

I agree with all the suggestions, except with #wikimedia-DBA. That sounds
and writes unnaturally.

Either it reflects a team, DBA, DBAs,Database-administrators, or a task; in that last case I would prefer Wikimedia-databases or WMF-databases. I would prefer it
without a reference to the foundation, after all, I am part of operations,
not Wikimedia operations, not wikimedia-netops, etc.

I know a better name doesn't fix worflows on its own, but it has to be easy
to find.

Makes sense. Thanks for explaining, please feel free to go ahead, either with DBA or Wikimedia-databases.

I've edited the description shown here:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/1060/

I've specifically avoided adding the alias #Database and #Databases, as those are ambiguous- (is it about database code or problems with actual databases?).

I want to clarify the differences between DBA and MediaWiki-libs-Rdbms, but I have problems doing it without sounding "that is not my job"- what I want to clarify is that if you create an extension X, it is the responsibility of the creator of X to create good and fast persistence code, even if I can be helpful in some cases, will verify it and apply personally the schema change.

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