RE: DBA's that tune duhveloper's SQL

Amen.

BTW, Stress-testing as part of testing path before production came after my personal experience when as the Oracle DBA new to an organization - the CIO would run into my office whenever there was a slowdown asking me how I was going to fix it. Not wanting to (1) suggest buying more hardware or (2) changing an init.ora parameter just to see the symptom show up as CPU versus memory - chasing my tail, I analyzed the system and saw some really poorly written SQL. I suggested tuning of that SQL and amazingly the system had enough memory and CPU and no init.ora parameter needed to be changed. Since then - as an in-house Oracle DBA I require stress-test be put into the project plan before something becomes productional so this kind of thing can be seen before the CIO runs into anyone's office. He said I handled stress well - as this happened for awhile on a mission-critical system and I was about 4 months pregnant. What a way to learn this important lesson - don't let it happen to you!

Oracle OCP DBA

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 4:14 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

> "IT - Database (Do Not Use)" wrote:
>
> We have a consultant doing some work at our site and he claims that in
> most shops the DBA's have the responsibility of tuning duhvelopers
> code. I find that hard to believe. I was wondering if maybe I am out
> of touch.....do most of you also tune all your duhvelopers code??? I
> can see working together with them if there are issue but have the
> responsibility of tuning all developer code....EGAD when would I have
> time to be a DBA. ; )
>
> Deborah Csongradi OCP
> Senior Database Administrator
> Edmonton Police Service
> Office: (780) 421-3567
> Fax: (780) 421-3363
>
> "Desire is the starting point of all achievements. Not hope; not wish,
> but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything."

What I usually see is, after a crisis, people coming to a DBA asking for database tuning - the magical init.ora parameter. More advanced users may ask for a review of indexing - DBA job, isn't it. Some dangerous users (consultants, usually) may even come with technical solutions of their own (partitioning DUAL, etc.). At which point a DBA who knows the job is quick to find the statement of death, and make the 55,000+ seconds query run in 8 seconds (an example from last week). In other words, SQL tuning is a bit of an accident. I personally find it unfortunate that, for mainly historical reasons, tuning has always been considered a topic for DBAs (and mostly senior ones) and people considered at various degrees to be experts. I believe that there should be a lot to be gained teaching people having between 2 and 5 years of development experience - who are past the simple problem of finding the query which returns the correct result set - even if it were only to look for the advice of others.

-- 
Regards,

Stephane Faroult
Oriole Software
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Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
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Author: Stephane Faroult
  INET: sfaroult_at_oriole.com

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