Re: Which is better: Oracle or SQLServer

Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:<1091761109.170763_at_yasure>...
>
> If someone wants to troll for Sybrand I think the correct post would be
> something like this:
>
> My boss just hired me as an Oracle DBA even thought my background in IT
> consists of pounding sand. Anyway I found this icon with a yellow cross
> on it. It is asking for something called "Host String". What should I do?
>
> Now that I expect would get Sybrand to respond with at least four
> letters. ;-)

When I was the oracle/unix support guy at vendor in the early/mid '90s, I used to get actual calls like that from new customers. But even worse: they would have a new unix box and some unix and oracle cd's, and a software tape, and I'd have to talk them from there. But hey, it was a living, they tended to at least be competent people in midsize shops and at least I could get them going a few months until they would get V7.x segmentation issues or whatever. It wasn't frustrating, it was rewarding to be helpful. Ocassionally I would get a combative DBA upset that the installation consultants wouldn't do their work for them - that I found frustrating.

But later as a DBA in a big gov/aerospace environment, I'd see very much what you said, and there was _no_ excuse for it there (reasons, yes, bad though they may be). This group being worldwide and unmoderated is going to have some, uh, diversity. So I advocate going easy on the newbies, pointing them in the right direction, but I can see Sybrands point, the reality of DBA work is harsh and it is too much to ask for a newbie to have full responsibility in a production environment - it's just plain bad management.

I just can't see sending a newbie to sqlserver, that is counter-productive for this group.

jg

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