Re: why administrator refuse to give permission on PLUSTRACE

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 09:22:37 -0700
Message-ID: <1194106953.976959@bubbleator.drizzle.com>

Galen Boyer wrote:

> On Sat, 03 Nov 2007, damorgan_at_psoug.org wrote:

>> Galen Boyer wrote:

>>> On Fri, 02 Nov 2007, damorgan_at_psoug.org wrote:
>>>
>>>> The solution is not for the developer to hack around prod hoping to
>>>> stumble on the issue.
>>> This is a complete misstatement of what is going on.  The developer
>>> is armed with something extremely important, which the dba is not,
>>> and that is deep knowledge of how the application was written.  The
>>> developer is not hacking around and stumbling, he is making very
>>> educated guesses at what could be wrong and checking into those
>>> pieces of the codebase.

>> Jonathan Lewis, Cary Millsap, Jeremiah Wilton, and numerous others I
>> could name could walk into your shop right this second, knowing
>> absolutely nothing about your business including its name, get DBA
>> privs on your production database and give you a list of what is and
>> is not the issue in a matter of minutes to hours.

> 
> That is exactly the point.  Those guys are not walking through the
> door.  Having that qualified of DBAs is very very rare.

But is the solution to put developers onto a production box with DBA privs? That may be what happens all to often but are you actually stating this as "best practice?"

>> Knowing how to fix it may require some tribal knowledge and that I
>> think clearly is something developers should do if the issue is code
>> related. But you don't fix things in prod ... you identify them in
>> prod. Fix them in dev. Test them in test. Deploy the fix in prod.
>
> Okay, then we are agreeing.

A long journey starts with a single step.

>> If you want access to prod it is to identify the problem. For that a
>> thorough understanding of wait events trumps your employee id every
>> time.

> 
> A thoroughly qualified DBA is something I'd rather have.  I don't want
> to be on the production system.

Then we are in complete agreement. I don't want you there either. Neither do I want your DBA so lacking in skill that that person is a nightmare waiting to happen.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org

Received on Sat Nov 03 2007 - 11:22:37 CDT