Re: 100% memory

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:35:36 -0700
Message-ID: <1216766132.36030@bubbleator.drizzle.com>


Comments in-line.

joel garry wrote:
> On Jul 21, 12:52 pm, DA Morgan <damor..._at_psoug.org> wrote:

>> BicycleRepairman wrote:
>>> On Jul 18, 2:40 am, Mladen Gogala <mgog..._at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:26:00 -0700, martin_ian_lewis wrote:
>>>>> An alarmed user has pointed out that the memory usage look very high.
>>>> You have users monitoring memory consumption?
>>>> --
>>>> Mladen Gogalahttp://mgogala.freehostia.com
>>> They run the backups too. Don't yours?
>> If I ever found a system that allowed an end-user to perform a
>> backup ... the DBA would be backing out the door with their
>> final paycheck.

>
> Over the years, I've seen plenty of systems where the users do the
> backups. I've seen plenty where the users don't do the backups. What
> do you think happens when there isn't a DBA? Which system would you
> rather work on after it breaks?

When everyone is responsible no one is responsible. The "designated" DBA may also be an end user but one person must be the responsible party.

There are plenty of competent consultants that can VPN in and do the work if it is just about money.

> From what I've seen, if users are given serious instruction on how to
> back up so they consider it part of their job, they do. The usual
> problem is they are not specifically told they have to. A secondary
> problem is they may not know to check if the backups have been
> successful.

Are they going to verify the backup took place? Are they going to look at the alert log and understand what they are reading?
Are they going to check gv$backup_corruption? Could they possibly restore and recover if they had to?

But ultimately it is about what I said ... if everyone is responsible then no one is. And unless someone is licensing an Oracle database to hold their mother's cookie recipes, granting SYSDBA to end-users is not a winning solution to for anyone other than an attorney.

> "Users" is a very broad term. Most of us are "users" of many systems,
> even if a full time DBA. Many places have databases in addition to
> the "mission-critical" one, and some of those are also mission-
> critical, if not always seen that way by the business, until, say, the
> payroll breaks (not a hypothetical in my experience...).

You may view yourself as a system "user" but to call yourself an "end user" is to torture the phrase.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
Oracle Ace Director & Instructor
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org
Received on Tue Jul 22 2008 - 17:35:36 CDT

Original text of this message