Re: Oracle 9i + Death of the DBA

"Sybrand Bakker" <gooiditweg_at_sybrandb.nospam.demon.nl> wrote in message news:fshbovg52ffo9rvk70d7t8pi6b4ku6c52e_at_4ax.com...
> On 9 Oct 2003 13:21:08 -0700, ed_zep_at_ntlworld.com (Ed) wrote:
>
> >I was wondering what people think about 9i's new features that
> >supposedly significantly decrease or at least alter the duties of the
> >DBA.
> >
> >Is anyone re-thinking their future career path because of it?
> >
> >Will there be such a great need for DBAs in the future?
> >
> >Any sensible comments appreciated.
> >
> >Ed.
>
> (..snip..)
> The death of the programmer has been announced at least during the
> last 15 years of the previous century. Yet he didn't disappear. He is
> now labeled 'developer' the only difference being he often didn't
> receieve any tuition on a formal approach to programming. Consequently
> he only knows how to a hack, not how to program. This 'developer' is
> already causing nightmares in many organizations. If the last resource
> of technical Oracle knowledge, the DBA, disappears, I think disaster
> will soon strike in those orgs.
> (..snip..)

Every time I read that "development is now easier", I cringe. As a developer, I've yet to find my job become any easier, even with the newest tools and features and rapid-application-design improvments. The problem with these new development tools is that yes, development has become mostly point-click-drag, write a few lines of code, and you're done. Those are the applications that are nightmares to run and debug. But, nobody knows otherwise! Or, more accurately, nobody cares to know. Why involve yourself in low-level code when your coworker can bang out an app in a day, with colorful backgrounds, fancy icons, and music playing in the background? My last project sat me in my office for 4-5 months, just learning "best practices", learning the "new" low-level stuff, coming up with a stable design architecture, etc. I did much more reading then typing. My biggest fear was that someone would come into my office and ask "So, how's the project going?"

There's a few of us real programmers left out there. :) But we feel the pressure of those fresh-out-of-class code monkeys (not a racial slur), banging away randomly on their keyboards (thus the description of "monkey", see http://www.houghi.org/jargon/code-monkey.php) until they get their fancy multimedia-enhanced application to work. Imagine what one of them could've produced in the 4-5 months that I sat staring at a computer screen and/or books, hopped up on caffeine, making what seemed to be random notes on my notepad? I'm sure their application would have blown mine away- visually. But guess what- did my application crash at all after we went into production? No. Did we need to suddenly buy more ram or additional processors for the servers? No. Did we lose any data? No. Were there strict restrictions on the client machines? No. Were we constantly rebooting the server to reclaim resources due to inadequate garbage collection? No. Have we been locked into using one version of an o/s, or one version of Oracle, or anything? No. Was there a need for a report that we couldn't produce? No. Etc, etc...

But try to explain all that during a multimedia presentation! The audience will fall asleep.

I'm not sure what this rant is about... maybe just to boost my own initiative. Or maybe to say that there's still a handful of us "real" programmers out there. Look for us when we're missing at the office luncheons, eating coffee (figuratively), and buried under piles of printouts. :) Even more so if we're the same person that manages the databases! Or, maybe this rant is basically saying "Learn everything you can", because there's always someone more "glitzy" breathing down your tail who believes that their job is now easier due to the latest "features". Chances are, they only know how to work the GUI.

-Thomas Received on Fri Oct 10 2003 - 12:18:04 CDT