Re: Fed Up with being a DBA

Noons wrote:

>>On this I'll agree. But one must remember that those commercial packages
>>were, for the most part, written a decade ago, have little more advanced
>>than v7 code, and desparately need work.
>>
>>
>
>No they don't. We are talking OLTP. There is nothing that needs "work"
>in that environment. All work was done ages ago when the darn thing
>was invented back in the 60s. Let's not re-invent boiled water just because
>we now have a u-beaut kettle to fill with. I/O in OLTP is pretty basic
>and MUST remain that way or you drop performance and scalability.
>Simple as that.
>

When I see bulk binds and FORALL in one of these packages I'll agree. And they aren't all pure OLTP inserts. Some do real processing.

>>My statement was that CBO will equal or outpeform RBO if in the hands of
>>someone that knows how to work with it.
>>
>>
>
>I disagree. The whole point behind CBO is PRECISELY to NOT have to know it
>in detail. Otherwise it's useless. If I have to know intimately an optimizer
>in order to make it work properly, I'll tell you one thing right away: there is
>something fundamentally WRONG with that optimizer...
>

I'm neither Tom Kyte nor Jonathan Lewis, etc. I don't mean know it as in the internals byte-by-byte block dump by block dump. What I mean is that you need to understand how it works and act appropriately. Something as simple as running DBMS_STATS regularly is often enough. Something not required or done by those still clinging to the RBO and its fixed rules.

>>Too many people are still thinking v7-8 when
>>they should be thinking v9-10. And likely it is those same people that
>>will be complaining soon that their jobs were off-shored.
>>
>>
>
>Daniel, the "threat to job" impending event sales line has been tried, many
>times before, in the Oracle world. It doesn't work. And the proof is all
>those "too many people" still in 7-8. Have you ever wondered why there are
>so many? They quite rightly don't give a hoot about new features unless they can
>use them. Stop blaming customers: they are the reason you and all of us
>are here. They ARE right. You (and I and many others) aren't.
>

I'd agree with you except that here in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. there is a huge pool of people with years of Oracle experience: And they are unemployed. The reason is that there is a large enough pool of highly qualified people that those with old skills, out of date skills, and less than senior skills are no longer needed.

I had the CIO of a major companyl tell me yesterday he no longer felt there was any reason to use his budget to train people when there were so many highly qualified people looking for work.

So people may or may not be scared. That's there business. But those signing their paychecks no longer feel the need to hire bodies with less than optimal skills and train them. Three of his employees just registered at the U using their own money and out of a concern that they not be replaced.

So it may not be true everywhere ... but it is true here.

>I'd prefer to see a more complete explanation of why. There are HEAPS
>of reasons why the CBO is a better solution. But so far I've only heard
>the "marketing" ones.
>

Then from now on you won't be able to say that. Here are three:

Partitioned Tables
Index Organized Tables
Function Based Indexes

Want more? There's a very long list.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
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