Re: Getting an Answer Is One Thing, Learning Is Another

"Joel Garry" <joel-garry_at_home.com> wrote in message news:91884734.0208121711.bfc1b33_at_posting.google.com...
> > Thanks again for the kind words. I'm not offended, but I *really* don't
want
> > to give the impression that Oracle is some sort of technological God to
be
> > tended by a select few, whilst everyone else follows holy writ (or
something
> > they read somewhere nce anyway). Any reasonably intelligent and computer
> > literate folk can understand it and harness it, it'd be a shame if there
was
> > a cult of names around a piece of software thats supposed to help us
manage
> > data.
>
> What I've seen, dealing with computer literate folk who don't know
> about Oracle,
> is that they _should_ be given that impression. They just don't have
> the foundation to understand the issues, yet they make important
> decisions based on severe misconceptions. This is the stuff of
> horror. The point of the eWeek article was that people generally
> don't want to learn the foundations.

I don't disagree either with the article or your overall thrust, *except* in so far as to say that I didn't say computer literate but *reasonably intelligent* and computer literate (emphasis mine). I'm afraid that I'd cast doubt on the intelligence level of anyone who didn't attempt to understand what they were trying to manage. My rating of people who can't be bothered to learn the foundations (of anything) and who just want a list of things to do is very very low indeed. I'd still maintain though that Oracle (and for that matter MSSQL as well) is a complex but not *difficult* product to understand. Providing that people are prepared to make the effort the complexity is the challenge not the nature of the beast itself. IMO anyway.

> Large (2000+ users) OLTP system - excessed network admins get
> transferred to be DBA's with no training, can't understand why you
> would tune a production system differently than a development system.
> After all, they're going to put them on the same server...

Hmmm. The no training part makes me sympathise with the admins, failing to understand prod vs dev makes me question their admin background.

> We had a pretty sweet deal there for a while as magicians. Why can't
> we have it again?

'Cos I look bad in a velvet cape and top hat?

<rant>
one of my pet peeves is that people ever increasingly rely on science and technology and yet equally increasingly avoid understanding it because it is 'hard'. This leads to bad science and bad decision making - vis the GM foods and Cloning debates at the mo. Science and technology absolutely need evangelists who can communicate the power and nature of their fields and turn people on rather than put people off.

</rant>

--
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
Audit Commission UK
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