Re: Oracle 10g - Diminishing DBA roles ...

Mark Bole <makbo_at_pacbell.net> wrote in message news:<Btp4d.957$nj.122_at_newssvr13.news.prodigy.com>...
> Daniel Morgan wrote:
>
> > Hans Forbrich wrote:
> >
> >> Daniel Morgan wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> Michael D. Long wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> "Noons" <wizofoz2k_at_yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
> I've often debated whether software development shouldn't be a
> >>>> licensed profession.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> It should be.
> >>>
> >>> But unlike medicine, law, and engineering, it may be too late to take
> >>> the necessary steps.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Never too late ... it took hundreds of years befor engineers created
> >> professional associations.
> >> A major challenge I see would come from Microsoft, as they have worked
> >> very,
> >> very hard to make programming (as well as computing in general) a
> >> commodity
> >> though such wonderful products as Visual Basic. They stand a lot to
> >> loose.
> >>
> >> <sigh>
> >> /Hans
> >
> >
> > Agreed. The fact that I am not optimistic doesn't mean, as we have
> > discussed, that I do not see it as a goal.
>
> A former automobile repair consultant and engineer (my Dad) would
> relate, with some degree of disdain, that the guy who cut your hair had
> to be licensed but the guy who fixed the brakes on your car did not (and
> at that time and place, it was always guys). For all I know, car
> mechanics need to be certified "on-board computer" geeks these days.

That's what service departments want you to believe. And like OCP, it has some truth to it, but is more of a marketing ploy.

And in the olden days, it was recognized that engineers needed to design brakes to be fixable by idiots. Nowadays they attempt to design to a low failure rate with a long lifespan. In general, brakes are better, but you wind up with recalls of hundreds of thousands of Volvos, and perhaps a real problem as the cars age and are "fixed" by idiots.

When I had my Dodge minivan, there was a problem with the brakes that two certified places (one dealer, one brake specialist) couldn't fix. They just replaced the pads and turned the rotors, and measured the rotors to be sure they were within spec.

The problem was, within spec didn't rule out the problem. The problem was the spec was wrong, near the limit there were problems. You can be sure that the third guy who took the time to show me exactly what was going on and _fixed it_ has my business forever. And that is exactly how I treat my customers, irrespective of OCP. But you might check out the ACM ethics: http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html

>
> I do remember reading a document twenty-some years ago titled something
> like "Toward a Software Profession" by an Ada consultant (name
> forgotten, paper not findable) which strongly advocated professional
> software licensing (programming, administering, whatever) as an industry
> standard.

Ada: Wasn't that a language that the US government standardized on to replace COBOL and everything else? Didn't that go over like a Lead Zeppelin?

>
> So if it took hundreds of years for engineers, maybe only decades for
> software professionals. After all, more and more people I know are
> getting OCP'ed.

Like printing money or issuing stock, that might just be watering down what little good there is. Two day DBA, indeed.

jg

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