Re: Boss is asking for 'root cause analysis'

On 30 Apr 2003 15:01:58 GMT, ctcgag_at_hotmail.com wrote:

>Ed Stevens <nospam_at_noway.nohow> wrote:
>
>> Now my manager is pressing for a root cause analysis and preventative
>> measures. When the question is asked regarding why did things
>> suddenly fall over and break, the only response the DBA that found the
>> solution can give is that perhaps we passed some sort of threshold.
>
>Do you have a test environment, identical or very similar to the production
>environment, that you can play with? If not, then tell your manager to put
>his money where his mouth is. If so, then restore test to the state that
>production was in just before it went bad, and capture some explain plans
>for the queries, load more data until it breaks, then capture explain plans
>of the now broken queries. Then set STAR_TRANSFORMATION_ENABLED=TRUE,
>and capture more explain plans. Compare and contrast amongst the three
>sets.
>
>Xho

Ah, and therein lies the problem! There *is* no test system, and no available server big enough to build one. DBA and the application developer have been complaining about this from Day One (this app is about six years old) to no avail. What you suggest is essentially what my mgr was also suggesting before we found the solution. He's the new kid on the block -- been here less than a month -- and was appropriately surprised to find we run this system with no failover, no test system, and only a daily server-level disk backup. All because the client isn't willing to fund the necessary hardware. Received on Wed Apr 30 2003 - 11:03:37 CDT