Are Oracle DBAs trivialized?

I'd like everyone's thoughts on this ...

More and more I am finding that the role of the Oracle DBA is not taken as seriously as it once was.

Having worked for many software companies in the last few years I see the same pattern over and over -- most shops refuse to stay current with Oracle and patchsets -- they're still running 8i, don't want to use Oracle-specific features (clusters, IOTs, etc.) for fear it will lock them into Oracle, and let the developers model and write their own DDL.

Most of the time I feel they only want a DBA to put out fires.

Here are some recent examples ...

• I had to pull teeth to get my current company to switch to RMAN.
• I got laughed at for naming NOT NULL constraints in my CREATE TABLE scripts
• I had a one of my designs tossed out because it had triggers, clusters, and deferrable FK constraints in it.
• I have been telling management for almost a year to get off 8i -- falls on deaf ears of course
• I get apps tossed at me with hundreds of poorly written queries (correlated subqueries everywhere, NOT EXISTS, etc.) that I have to rewrite for speed.
• I get crap from the UNIX SAs at just the thought using 10g ASM when we finally upgrade, by that time Oracle 13 will be out.
• I have developers who commit every SQL statement and throw highly denormalized tables at me, but management still feels they should NOT have to come to me to get a table designed.
• HA requirements but they refuse to use RAC or Data Guard.

This is not just my current company, but they all seem to be the same lately. It seems that the Java shops operate this way more than anyone else -- very hostile attitude towards Oracle and DBAs in general.

Is it just me, or does this go on everywhere?

Domenic. Received on Sun Apr 10 2005 - 22:02:16 CDT