RE: Nature of Oracle-l has changed

Well...I made the transition from development to DBA when we initially got "SAP'd" (1993) partly because it looked interesting, partly because I was the only one on the development staff who bothered to dig into the technical end of things and...partly because management at the time had this overly optimistic assumption that they wouldn't need programmers after they dumped all the in-house applications and dinosaur software packages. There was also the assumption that "client-server" systems would require fewer people to support. Hah! Through various mergers, divestments, acquistions, and so on -- neither of these assumptions have proven to be true. The panacea of packaged software may have changed things...but in my experience it has mostly been tool changes. And, OK, I guess it could be argued that my job is more "system integrator" than traditional DBA now...whatever the heck that is...but this has tended to be my role regardless of title I was given. ;-)

Kip Bryant

|There is another thing happening: companies are more and more relying on
|canned,
|off the shelf applications, in a hope to become "compliant with present
|standards".
|That has dramatically cut down the number of needed developers, because if
|you don't
|have to develop your general ledger, payroll, CRM and HR software, you only
|need
|IT staffers to monitor production.
|That is why I think that Jonathan Lewis is wrong in his "Practical
|Databases" when he talks
|about "DBA being a repository of knowledge". No, the role of the DBA today
|is the one
|of a crane operator: "just get the darned thing going, buddy". DBA is a
|mechanic that
|fixes database when it's slow, and that's it. The business role of IT is no
|longer
|to be at the forefront of the organization, but to keep thins running and do
|what
|business people tell them to do. Companies are no longer doing development
|are leaving
|cooking to the cooks and software development to the big software companies.
|One of the reasons is also the culture clash among very well educated,
|liberal and hippie
|computer geeks and somewhat less educated "old school" drill sergeant type
|managers who want
|everybody to be at their desks at 7:30, cleanly shaven, no jeans, no "surf
|naked" Dilbert
|T-shirts or "I am a DMCA circumvention device" T-shirts. Basically, what I'm
|noticing is
|sort of "returning to the roots" cultural movement where business management
|no longer
|wants to tolerate the laid back IT culture. When cost cutting decisions are
|made, IT people
|are the 1st to go. They stil need DBA's because they'd better have somebody
|monitoring
|their multi-TB databases, but development is no longer necessary. IT
|applications
|are going to be as standardized as a stapler, so there is less and less need
|for development.
|Friends, we're dinosaurs, a dying breed. I'm considering a career of a
|second
|hand car salesman or a real estate agent.

|--
|Mladen Gogala
|Oracle DBA

|-----Original Message-----
|Stephane Paquette
|Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 10:29 AM
|To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

|That's why my post on historic tables and views seem lonely ....;-)

|Stephane

|-----Original Message-----
|Jared Still
|Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 2:19 AM
|To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

|Has anyone else noticed?

|Not so long ago, we saw quite a few more questions about
|such things as data modeling, application security architecture, physical
|database design, and Oracle Designer

|Not so much anymore.

|Do you think it's because there are so few development projects taking
|place? Seems like in house development died with the dot bomb and has not
|begun to recover.

|I know at my place of employment there is very little development, but that
|is due more to the size and nature of this place, as
|well as the management. ( they don't like in house development :( )

|Now I spend my days with stuff like making NetBackup work with Oracle,
|migrating SAP all over the place and keeping things running.

|Not that we haven't always done those things, but I miss some not having a
|good development project. Ah, to do some real
|data modeling again.

|Just some food for thought.

|Jared

|--
|Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
|--
|Author: Jared Still
| INET: jkstill_at_cybcon.com

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|--
|Author: Mladen Gogala
| INET: mladen_at_wangtrading.com

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-- 
Author: 
  INET: Kip.Bryant_at_Vishay.com

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