Re: Fed Up with being a DBA

"Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1063513837.630270_at_yasure...

> Except that when you have a stack of 100 resumes on your desk ... and 20
> have 9i experience and don't give you a blank stare when you say UNDO
> and LMT guess who gets the job?

The 20, of course. It's all to do with people's attitude to their chosen field. If they are not curious enough to learn what exists in new software, they don't deserve to get new jobs. It's the same everywhere: lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc. That is not to say they are automatically stupid or without skills or on the way out because their last or current employer decided to stay with an older version. They can stay there and work there and chose to learn the new software on their own. Which is probably how they got where they are now anyways. The true pros.

The opportunist "dotcom" wannabes, well, they either change or they are out. Nothing wrong with that.

>
> With 10g on the market ... if one person understands regular expressions
> and shredding XML into nested tables and the other doesn't guess who
> gets the job.
>

Regular expressions are nothing new. Anyone who has been working in Unix knows them only too well: they have been around for nearly 30 years now. I'd guess it wouldn't be a major hurdle for a Unix person to learn the Oracle version pronto. As for shredding XML, it's been there to play with in the XDK kits since 8i. Anyone that hasn't played with them, if nothing else to learn what the heck XML is all about, deserves a wallop.

But you can bet the attitude from the "employers" is gonna be: if you don't know 10G, then how can you possibly know about regexp or XML? Which is as wrong as it can get. But you can bet the purveyors of 10G certification will support and encourage that attitude...

> and build a database with DBMS_RLS, DDL triggers, bulk binding, etc. My
> mother is not going to get the job. ;-) Oh well. Sorry mom.

Well that is actually a very good subject. What is the point of having someone who can do all those things when the site you run does not EVER use them?

Going back to an example you used: "get someone with 9i experience, Solaris experience, billing". What experience? Which part of 9i? ALL of it? Yeah, right, there ain't a SINGLE one! ALL of Solaris? Yeah, right, there ain't a SINGLE one! ALL of "billing"? etcetc. See what I mean by the silliness of the request? What is 9i or Solaris or billing "experience"?
More precisely: WHICH parts of 9i, Solaris, or billing do they need experience of or are they going to be using?

This to lead to the point: to do with the traditional DBA role and new versions. I've long been saying that Oracle is highly complex and full of needless features for the vast majority of sites out there. It is nearly impossible for any DBA to know them all and be totally familiar and conversant with ALL of them at ALL times.

That is why OCP exams for example are multi-part and across a number of disciplines. Change them to everything in the same day and you won't get a single pass! Ie, people study as needed, then forget all about it until they ever need it again. For that matter, if anyone asks YOU to teach ALL aspects of 9i EVERY single day, you'll just call them nuts won't you? Same problem.

All this to say: it is pointless to insist on vague specs like "experience of this or that version" until we find out EXACTLY what are the demands of the particular job or situation. And if it is relevant in that situation to talk about a specific version of anything.

> That is where you are ... not where I am. Open yourself to the
> possibility that the West Coast of the US is not Oz. To which, I expect
> most of your countrymen and women are offering a small prayer of thanks.

:) C'mon, the place is not THAT bad!

Sure, I'm open. I've also seen the feedback in many online forums. The problem is the employers are being told what they should look out for. Guess who will be telling them they should ask for 5 years of experience on 10G one month after the release?

> >
> I think you can still get education visas if you aren't from certain
> parts of the planet. ;-) Come on up.

Narh. One only migrates once in life. It's too traumatic a process to go through again... My field is not specific versions of Oracle either anymore. Or even Oracle itself. Mostly general db design, complex development and mentoring. I sitll do a bit of DBA when nobody else can or knows how to do it. But for that I can read the manuals like anyone else.

Pure research and education is what I'd like to do. But like so many things in life, one has to compromise and take what is offered. Golf and woodworking will do as a substitute for the time being. Once I retire, watch out! ;)

> They are trying to compete with the claim that Oracle is too hard to
> manage. It has hurt their sales. Of course so has their pricing but I
> believe that too will be addressed with the release of 10g. Larry has a
> fiduciary responsibility to his stockholders ... I don't.

I think the high price has done more to hurt Oracle than ANYTHING the DBAs could have done or charged. But I've got no way to prove it other than wait. IMO, Larry has gone after the wrong people and totally alienated those that always supported the product. That's bad.

> It is definitely not too late. And I suspect all it will take is Larry
> sacrificing some short-term profits to regain market share. I've heard
> rumors of a new pricing structure for 10g but I know nothing other than
> rumors. If the price comes down ... the gloves come off.

Not sure. Low price has been what DB2 and SQL Server have always used. They are WAY ahead of Oracle in that respect. And they can discount to unheard of levels, because databases are NOT their mainstay. M$ has already started to bundle SS with the OS. Do you think Oracle stands a chance against that? No way.

Oracle should have looked at the price issue ages ago. Now, they have to contend with guys that have been doing it for ages. Not easy. Let's not even start on MySQL and Postgres, those have the ability to hurt and bad. I think they will, but I won't venture which one. In Australia, MySQL seems to be more popular. That may be because of the "bubble" thing and therefore not representative in the long run.

> If you'd stop saying things I disagree with we could end this thread.

Hey, it wouldn't be a debate if we agreed? :)

> 50-100 DBAs. George asked how many people were familiar with the various
> TARGET_ADVICE views. Five or six hands went into the air. That is only
> 10%. The others hadn't a clue what he was talking about. You could see
> in their faces.

That to me says: the darn things are useless or too complex for people to bother with. I'm always reminded of a presentation I watched a while ago on Quest's Spotlight. Where the marketeer went on and on about some "light blip" on a particular wait event on a particular point in time, and how important it was to tune it out. After the prezzy, someone asked me what the heck was the point of tuning a single statement used ONCE in a day which lighted up some obscure wait event. I had to agree it was mostly irrelevant! Nothing against Spotlight, BTW. It's a good product, better than many.

> He may have to pay extra. And my guess is that he will for the right
> person.

But that's always been the case! Nothing new there or related to new versions.

> But that sentiment is not uncommon. The wanting of the skills
> ... not the paying of more money. Go to http://www.dice.com and search
> for Oracle jobs in Seattle. Look at the requirement lists. And these
> people are serious about what they expect to get and they are getting it.

No point. The markets are just too different to even compare. In Australia, we deal mostly with packaged apps. There is very little development. Whenever there is some, the design and requirements work is done locally, but the coding is usually farmed out.

It always comes back as some "portable" applied cookie cutter code. Which means essentially: you might as well have V7 there if you can get it cheap enough, because it won't have a single thing you'll need 10g for, or 9i or 8i.

It's a bugger, but it's reality. We have all these people running 9i, when we lift the covers and find out what really is being used, it's good old plain V6-7 SQL... Even PL/SQL ends up being seldom used. Wanna know how many times I've seen object relational used in a db design? Once: one of my designs! In 8 years or so the darn thing has been out!

I hate it, but it's what I got to live with. And I'm long done with trying to change this: there is just no support from Oracle to do so and if I try I always get the "ongoing issue" thrown back at me. Just not worth bothering with, quite frankly.

> home a paycheck to pay the mortgage and put the kids through college ...
> it is not serving his/her interests which should be to stay right on the
> cutting edge.

The ones worth keeping WILL stay on the cutting edge. Even if they don't take ALL the courses they should.
Attitude and professionalism, not versions!

> Yeh. Right after I get them to put client-server back into Forms which I
> consider one of the all time braindead decisions.

Agreed 100%.

> They looked at my DDL for CREATE DATABASE and asked me what this
> "uniform extents" thing was. Turns out they hadn't even heard of LMTs.
> And that is not that unusual.

Well, it comes back to weeding out undesirable attitudes. It happens in any industry. Do you think for a second those would take ANY benefit from sitting in one of your courses? They would just nod away, take heaps of free coffee and end up going back to the same old same old. Wasted training.

> >
> Keep in mind I live within five miles of the Microsoft Campus and teach
> in a building named Mary Gates Hall (named by Bill after his mother)

ah yes, the member of the board of IBM at the time Microsoft got the job to make the PC OS. And we keep hearing the old wife's story about how IBM decided to give the PC market to Microsoft because G.K., the guy from DR, was not in the office when IBM called. As if! "Accidental empires" really exposes that one...

> the next building over is the Paul G. Allen building. If anywhere on
> this planet there was a pressure to drop Oracle it would be here. Yet
> that is not what is happening.

Can't comment. Been out of the uni market for too long.

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
wizofoz2k_at_yahoo.com.au.nospam