Justifying a new DBA position

Hello.

I am one of 2 programmers in my department that are working on developing various database applications on the web using, OWAS 2.1 & 3.0, PL/SQL and ORACLE 7 & 8. We have one production instance on an RS6000 running AIX, Oracle 7.3 and OWAS 2.1.
We have one production instance on a Dell PowerEdge running NT, Oracle 8 and OWAS 3.0.
We have one development instance on a GateWau E-3100 running NT, Oracle 7.3 and OWAS 2.1.

There is a sys-admin for the RS6000, but he only is the admin for the OS.

We currently have 3 production applications averaging between 500-800 users. The data-models average around 30 tables per application. The data for the applications is small around a hundered megs. We will increase that number by 1 or 2 a year. Some of the applications we develop we house elsewhere and thus don't need to support them once they are built.

As of late, the DBA duties required to manage our existing applications and their hardware/software environment is sereously impacting our ability to maintain our previous development rate for new application.

I am trying to convince my boss of the need for a dedicated DBA to manage existing applications and the development evironment to allow the developers to focus on development.

Does anyone have any good information that would aid me in convincing him of the need to either add a DBA or re-assign one of us programmers to that role and then live with half the production rate. We know how to do a good job as DBA's, we just don't have the time to keep up on development deadlines and do a good job of keep the production apps happy, safe and secure.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Kenneth Murphy
Office of Social & Economic Data Analysis University of Missouri - Columbia
murphyk_at_umsystem.edu or 573-884-8794 Received on Fri Jun 26 1998 - 17:21:57 CDT