Re: Are Oracle GUIs causing a decline in DBA salaries?

Karsten Farrell <kfarrell_at_belgariad.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.191701b35d952fc898975b_at_news.la.sbcglobal.net>...
> forbrich_at_telusplanet.net said...
> > Why of course ... grab the mouse, cover your eyes, point and click. What could be easier? Mind you, it's insane
> > but who said anything about needing to do real DBA work?
> >
> > It's management's perception that counts. And if management thinks it can be done in 1/2 the time and at 1/2 the
> > cost with 1/2 the expertise using GUI, they have the right to pay for what they get <g>
> >
> I'm sorry, but I must be missing something here. Why are GUI users
> equated with unskilled, rank amateurs? Why is something that makes my
> job easier a bad thing? And what's wrong with providing tools to assist
> those who ain't an old goat like me (eg, newbie DBAs)?

The problem is, management too often does not want to pay for experience if they don't have to, and the GUI's allow them not to - to a point. So you wind up with unemployed or underemployed experienced people, and places that don't have experienced people when they need them for a brief fix. I've been getting a number of inquiries lately that indicate the latter, and I have to tell them "sorry, I'm boooked right now." It becomes a scheduling problem for an independent, because you can't depend on lots of little onesy-toosey things like this to come in a smooth time-scale. So everyone loses. I keep telling people it would be cheaper and more cost-effective to just hire me, but they insist on throwing more money at me. And I get the impression that groups of DBA's who get together to try to handle such a market don't do too well either.

To answer your first question; because GUI's are designed for and used by rank amateurs. Now, I just posted a few minutes ago advising someone to use a GUI, I understand they are useful as you say, even to experienced folk (perhaps more so, as they can understand what the limitations are). So in actuality, they are a tool, no more. But the perception belies "no less." And they certainly make it a _lot_ easier to do things in a non-repeatable manner. I still must insist that anything to be done more than twice must be doable in some sort of command file, else the likelihood of errors is much greater than most people will admit. And even twice is pushing it.

>
> I didn't use GUIs with Oracle 5, 6, or 7 ... any more than I used a GUI
> to write my Fortran or Cobol programs ... but I don't see how a DBA who
> uses a GUI today is _less_ skilled than one who doesn't. Using the
> command line doesn't make a DBA _more_ skilled than one who doesn't.

I disagree, because I think it takes less abstract understanding to use the command line - rather than understanding concepts (and perhaps misunderstanding them), the command line pretty much requires you understand the workings as well as the concepts. It's also easier for some things to get log files to see later what happened.

>
> And in many cases, using a GUI does allow a DBA to do some tasks in half
> the time. If there's a GUI tool that helps me do my job, I use it. If
> there isn't a GUI tool available, then I do it the old-fashioned way.

But it requires experience to know the limits. When crunch time comes and help becomes hindrance...

Ever see grants and privileges get propagated so that everyone has everything?

>
> This idea that "real men don't use GUIs" is an old myth.

There's gotta be a "real old men" joke in there somewhere! :-)

>
> Let the flames begin!

We have ignition!

jg

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