Afterword: "Making Good" of Database Programming
Rather amazingly, the other day I bought a name-brand 1.2-gigahertz PC for less than $1,000, and it included a 60-gigabyte hard drive. Then I saw a new 80-gigabyte drive for about $200. You've probably come across similar great deals. But to tell you the truth, I have mixed feelings about the falling costs of the hardware needed to run a big database. With software like Oracle getting more and more sophisticated, particularly in its ability to quickly analyze mountains of data, even average-size businesses can afford tools that can turn data into "competitive advantage."
Unfortunately, some of these technologies of competitive advantage are troubling. I don't mean that they represent bad design—in fact, many of them are extremely clever. Instead, the disturbing part has to do with what people are trying to accomplish in the first place. That is the subject of this concluding section. I will explore:
A few "modern" applications of database technology
The ethical problems raised by these applications
The response to these problems by application developers
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