RANT: Re: Boss is asking for 'root cause analysis'

<snip>
>
>
> 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.

<rant>
Testing within production and holding accountability for unseen problems is an insane model for any management to buy into. Yet is happens time and time again. Grant it, sometimes this occurs because some systems administrators do not size appropriately and put together plans that only meet the immediate production need. The sickest part of your dilemna is that when you state to them that you do not have enough statistics, they will hold *you* accountable for not monitoring it appropriately by putting the tools necessary in place. Then when you need a system to do growth analysis and exploratory research, its not there. Given that you are on 8.0.6 on NT lets me know that this is a miserly organization. 8.0.6 from a performance perspective is adequate, but sincerely not the best you could be doing. Then to also have the audicity to not fund failover mechanisms and still hold you accountable is ludacris. But then again, you'll get them coming back that "with appropriate monitoring" you should be able to catch issues and repair them with inconsequential downtime. It may still impact production and be down for a bit, but in the grand scheme its "inconsequential". I'm also guessing that if you're on 8.0.6 on NT, you are on some old hardware with slow arrays (if they're using arrays :). </rant>

Given what star transformation does, I suppose the best thing to do is say " The data had grown to a level where enabling this feature allowed us to better utilize our bitmap indexes with the data. The explain plans were positively changed in a manner that supported the new data volume and usage." Or some gooey crap that makes them all smiley happy. If they can't provide the proper tools, you can't provide the proper answers.

ken k Received on Thu May 01 2003 - 01:16:38 CDT