What happened... Yahoo traditionally used a lot of flat files (slow) or shared memory files (fast). We started using MySQL as an experiment (in our group), and we found that we: Wrote a lot of similar code, using DBI Often re-implemented similar routines in each script Often re-implemented similar routines in each library/module Were inconsistent within our own group Some knew DBI and used prepare, exectue, fetch Some didn't know DBI much and used a small subset Most didn't do error handling well, if at all Scattered user/pass/host/db info throughout Of course we moved MySQL to a different server More than once Didn't structure our databases well, initially Initially put all tables into one database It was sort of our own 640k problem