Re: Oracle DBA

"B MAC" <gucciard_at_creek.uh.edu> wrote in message news:Pine.OSF.4.33.0109201317580.808337-100000_at_creek.uh.edu...
> > FWIW - I would never hire a "paper DBA";
> > which is a person with a "certificate" but
> > no hands on knowledge or real world experience.
>
> Many people in this newsgroup have told me the same thing in the
> past.
>
> >
> > What I find interesting is that you neglected
> > to say what YOUR experience in the IT world is
> > or what you ENJOY doing.
>
> I (mostly) program in C and (seldomly) in C++.
>
>
> > From my perspective, everybody should do what they
> > ENJOY doing to keep food on the table. Life is too
> > short to be miserable 5 days a week.
>
> I agree. My salary is competitive also, but money is not everything for
> me. This is the reason why I want to switch to databases, which I've
> always been interested in.
>
>
> >
> > In companies which have 1 or more "full time DBAs"
> > the vast majority of those companies by count have
> > only ONE DBA. Typically the whole company runs off
> > the database; which means when the DB goes down,
> > the WHOLE company ceases to function. At least this
> > is what happens in my company. With a company that
> > typically does $200,000 per HOUR in sales, the DBA is
> > under extreme pressure to get the DB up & keep it up.
> > If you don't like that kind of pressure, then maybe
> > you don't want to become a DBA.
> >
>
> This is a very good point. I am known to be pretty good at joggling
> between different tasks and at working under pressure. At the same time, I
> realize that the kind of pressure a DBA has to deal with may be of a
> different nature. I guess I will never know until I become a DBA myself.
>
> This brings to another question:
>
> Are DBAs allowed to take long vacations, or do companies discourage
> their DBAs from doing that considering the database may crash?
>
> Thanks again.
>
>

I would forget about 'long vacations'
Usually when I go away for one week, they simply don't resolve the problem, unless the database really crashes. When you return you will find you are making overtime to get issues addressed. When I go away longer they will try to resolve it. As they don't know what they are doing, this is also a disaster.

The problem here is there are many sites who have only one (and quite often inexperienced ones) DBA. People who are working alone usually don't document anything. You are considered the guru (or the man with one eye in the land of the blind, whatever applies), but you have the weight of the whole database on your shoulders.
The problem also is that many people (including developers) don't really *solve* their problems, they only patch them away. Ultimately this results in disastrous performance, and of course the developer is never at fault.

Of course you could implement rigorous and robust backup procedures, which make recovery a piece of cake, but I know from experience your firm won't see this a productive work, so they simply won't let you do that.

Regards,

Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA Received on Thu Sep 20 2001 - 14:21:28 CDT