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Re: Cary's book

From: <rgaffuri_at_cox.net>
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003 07:39:26 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.005D1F60.20031003073926@fatcity.com>


I personally feel that its managements call to make these kinds of decisions. If they are bad decisions its both their fault and their problem. If this forces you to work an incredible amount of hours, quit and go somewhere else. Hard to say that in a slow economy though.

To be fair, I feel that the biggest weakness in technical people is our lack of understanding management,cost, and customer relations. Im not different. From my level, I dont see the big picture in the company. I may not be privy to the information. Your manager may say no to you because someone up the food chain told him to. He wont necessarily be in a position to tell you this.

Not sure if this kind of a book would be worth writing. I doubt managers would read it.

I think another big weakness amongst technical people is over-specialization. to be at the top of a skillset you have to focus, but if you focus too much its VERY hard to work with other skillsets since you dont know enough about their area of expertise to even know if the person is competent or not.

You also run into, lets keep it in my skillset fights. You know everything in the database(I prefer this, but am open) or everything in the application layer. This is in large part because people are not familiar with other skillsets.

I think a huge question that still needs to be resolved is how do you efficiently map a relational database schema to an object-oriented front end? There are no good methods. The best I have heard of is an article by Dorsey in ODTUG about using Object Views as a 'middle tier', but that is some fairly complex mapping.

well i got off topic and rattled on...
>
> From: Mladen Gogala <mladen_at_wangtrading.com>
> Date: 2003/10/03 Fri AM 11:14:33 EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
> Subject: Cary's book
>
> I enjoy immensely reading Cary's book, but I have some questions that
> I want to ask publicly. Recently, I made a comment about Chris Lawson's
> book being a "Dale Carnegie book for a DBA" and now I see that Cary is
> also advising feeding the hungry business users ("buy him a sandwich").
>
> It is true that many problems are consequences of inadequate
> communication, general lack of business knowledge in the "computer geek
> culture" and even disdain for it, but, in my opinion, many problems are
> also a consequence of incompetent managers ("damagers"), office
> politics, and hard times. Hard times present problems because people do
> not want to pay for a competent DBA but frequently hire a shaman or a
> witch doctor who "improves" on the system based on snake oil type
> techniques. If I cannot get more money then some bozo after a
> performance tuning course (example from Chris Lawson's book), why bother
> reading and investing into myself? A cynical geekish attitude and the
> "old boys" network will do just as well.
> Characteristics of the "performance analyst", as described in the book,
> are the ones of the field general (has the overview of the whole
> problem, motivates, manages the problem) but performance analysts
> frequently work for the drill sergeants who mostly care how are they
> dressed (you guessed it, I hate neckties) and did they show up early
> enough.
>
> Now, after having indulged into lengthy preamble, let's ask the
> questions:
>
> 1) This book is meant for performance analysts. Do you plan on writing
> one for management, as well? If performance analysts are held back by
> the damagement,they cannot perform any of the good work you described in
> your book. You have been both a DBA and a VP, so you have the
> credibility in both roles.
>
> 2) Do you foresee a change for the role of a performance analyst in an
> organization to be more of a technical manager and less of a computer
> geek?
>
> 3) What will happen to the "traditional DBA"? Are we an endangered
> species? Should I be wary of the poachers?
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
> --
> Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
> --
> Author: Mladen Gogala
> INET: mladen_at_wangtrading.com
>
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Author: <rgaffuri_at_cox.net
  INET: rgaffuri_at_cox.net

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Received on Fri Oct 03 2003 - 10:39:26 CDT

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