OT - Opinions on workload

I have a generic question that hopefully some of you have experience at.

What do you think the IT requirements would be for a project that wants to take an existing Oracle 11 database (roughly 40 data tables) and add a GIS front-end to it with ARC (probably the Enterprise version, for multi-user, multi-editor). This is all still in the planning stages (for another month), so I'd like to be able to provide some facts for the person proposing the project. So far, it sounds like they are only planning on one part-time IT person.

This person would be responsible for everything Oracle and ARC-GIS related, including installing, configuring and maintaining an ARC-server installation, the main Oracle database, probably a dummy Oracle database in-between (to avoid giving ARC DBA rights in the real database), all of the programming, user support (for the ARC and Oracle parts), maintaining a 5 person office with it's LAN and associated hardware, etc. There are several schemas within the database for other projects, but (so far) only one of the schemas will be GISable

Is it realistic for one person to actually accomplish all of this with only a 40 hour work week, or would more folks be required, in your own professional opinions? Keep in mind that 250 hours (a little over 6 weeks) of the work year is wasted on security documentation, plus roughly 2 months each year for Annual Leave, sick time, training, maintaining the other schemas and their associated programming, etc. So, this only leaves about 38 weeks each year (maximum) that could be spent working on and maintaining the above, along with training new users, developing new code for added functionality, etc.

Things are still in the planning stage on this, and I think the workload estimate is way to low, and the person stuck with this will burn out extremely quickly, but I would like to have some case examples before the person proposing the project finishes up. I'm only an IT person, not a scientist, so obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to these gosh-darn technical issues, so some actual case examples from those of you who have either done it or seen it done, and how it worked (or failed) and why would be useful. I really don't have much hope of this project actually requesting (and recieving) any extra IT support, and just the Oracle end of it has been keeping me busy, around 80 hour weeks without additional compensation. I just really don't see how this can be successful based upon my own experience and knowledge, but perhaps I am missing something?

Thanks for any and all input.

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• Bill Ferguson -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l