Re: DBAs:Databases 1:10 (Oracle) 1:31 (SQL Server)

Hi

I also couldn't be bothered ^H^H^H^H^H find time to read the paper in full, but have an opinion anyway :) .

First this isn't a measure of how many databases a DBA can support, but how many they *do* support. Related to that is my view that DBAs don't in fact support databases at all. We support applications (either in whole or in part). The measures that you have suggest - but don't conclusively show - that the applications running on Oracle databases tend to be larger and quite possibly more complex than those on Microsoft. This probably goes a long way to explaining why more resource gets dedicated to the Oracle based things.

Second this sort of analysis will suffer from the ratio analysis problem that a) the measure maybe meaningless anyway and b) 10 dbas managing 100 databases is the same ratio as one managing 10 - telling me both the numbers tells me a lot about the two shops Ratios hide detail.

On 6/13/06, Tony Jambu <tjambu_freelists_at_yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> Hi all
>
>
> Recently, I came across an 'interesting' paper on the comparative
> difference of the total cost of database administration between
> Oracle and SQL Server. It was conducted by Alinean.
>
>
> Some interesting findings:
>
> Measure Microsoft Oracle
> --------------------------------------- --------- ------
> Average number of databases per company 107 87
> Average number of users per database 328 716
> Mission critical databases 66.1% 63.8%
> Transaction-based databases 55.7% 60.3%
> Decision-support databases 44.3% 39.7%
> *** Databases supported per DBA 31.2 9.9
> Users supported per DBA 6,784 5,567
> Annual TCA per database $2,847 $10,206
> Annual TCA per database user $13.09 $18.15
>
> If you cant read the above, make sure you have it as fixed font or
> goto http://www.alinean.com/PDFs/Alinean-MicrosoftAndOracleTCAStudy.pdf
>
>
> I find it hard to believe that the average Oracle DBA can manage only 10
> databases.
> From memory, a past survey on best practices indicated that an Oracle DBA
> manages
> on average about 30 Oracle databases.
>
> I guess for my own interest and possibly all those interested too,
> we could work out what our ratio of DBAs:Databases. If you are so kind
> as to reply to the following questions.
>
>
> Q1. How many DBAs are in your company
> Q2. How many Production Databases (Oracle + others) do they manage
> Q2. How many Test/Dev Databases (Oracle + others) do they manage
>
> If you do not wish to publish the figures directly to this list,
> just send me an email and I will collate it after a week.
>
>
> tony
>
>
> --
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>
>
>

-- 
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info

--
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