Re: Role of a DBA -- what servers should he administer

Hemant K Chitale doodled thusly:

>
>Unix and NT administration is already being done by seperate
>persons. Should the DBA relinquish such "application servers"
>as listed above ? Particularly, if he is asked to relinquish them
>to the "Business Systems" group which handles identification
>of new application requirements, installation of applications
>by vendors, implementation of applications and development
>of customisations by contractors.
>
>What's your opinion ? What is the practice in other large
> IT departments ?

well, this really boils down to what makes up a "production DBA" as opposed to a "development DBA" or a "site/senior DBA".

IMO, a production DBA should take care of the aspects that are being touted as the responsibility of the DBA there. Ie, the backups, hardware interface tuning, etc.

The development DBA should be responsible for ensuring that the quality of the database interface of anything written in-house is of such calibre that it won't present insurmountable production problems or blow out spare production capacity.

The site/senior DBA should work in close relationship with the business analysts and the vendors to make sure no one is buying "lemons" or incompatible systems.

Of course, it all boils down to size of organization. In a small IT department, one person will do all the above and more or parts of the thing will be outsourced. That will be more economical than relying on a single person to do everything.

In a medium size IT dept, you'd see a separation between the production and the development DBA happening first.

In a large organization, it is absolutely mandatory that the third class of DBA exists.

However, this is not always the case. Hence so many IT depts facing a crisys of late. They are now paying for absolutely abysmal choices for the last three or four years.

Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_optushome.com.au.nospam Received on Wed Dec 19 2001 - 08:33:30 CST