Re: Oracle Politics

Norwood3 wrote:

> Just wondering if anybody else out there is feeling my pain. We're
> going thru a series of Sarbaynes-Oxley compliance conversations here
> where I work. I work for a manufacturing company where technology is
> neither respected or really understood.
>
> As a newer employee (I am the dba), I find it increasingly difficult to
> deal with my manager (clearly non-technical) who is constantly messing
> up technical facts with auditors, and ruining the credibility of my
> department. Unfortunately, my manager is viewed as a "genious" simply
> becuase she is significantly "less stupid" than the other IT managers.
>
> To make matters worse, there is no central IT type (eg. CIO) who
> over-sees IT issues and makes final decisions across departments and
> the enterprise. So, during company wide IT meetings, bad decisions get
> made because managers don't understand the facts and are subject to
> believing outright lies or inaccuracies.
>
> I have had to risk getting fired for doing such straightforward things
> as kicking developers out of production and the like. Management has
> resorted to consulting outside help to aid in the situation (eg Oracle
> corp) instead of relying on their Oracle dba (me) because they can sort
> out fact from fiction. I am an ex-consultant, certified DBA with
> almost 10 years of experience. We run Oracle financials 11i, and the
> latest farce is that the auditors wish to track EVERY change in the
> data in the database, and who did it. Moronic, since all of the tables
> are owned by APPS, GL, AP schemas etc. and the application itself does
> all of the DML thru the forms.
>
> If the job market in the NW was better, I'd be OUTTA HERE!!!
>
> Just venting...does anybody else work in an environment like this?
> Only Oracle people understand ;)

I've done a number of Sarbanes-Oxley implementations and I can appreciate your pain. That said I've got some bad news for you ... that is the law, the auditors are correct, and when they are done everything you and the UNIX SA's do will be audited or they will have failed to comply.

If you think the CEO, COO, CFO, etc. are going to be willing to go to jail for you ... you're late to polishing your resume.

If you want to talk ... contact me off-line as this conversation does not belong in a public forum. But this is a really good time to be thinking about the enhanced auditing capabilities of 10g such as FGAC, FGA, DDL triggers, and system triggers.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)