DBA-Sys admin Relationship - Need help to define it

Hi:

        I am a newly transitioned DBA. I was a developer. I am having trouble defining where the DBA should be in the hierarchy with respect to Sys admins and also what should fall under the realm of the responsibility of the DBA. It seems as though the following aspects of our company's set-up are sub-optimal and I need your reflection on the same.

1. A few weeks ago, I (as the DBA) was denied root access. I gather from netters that this is the norm.
2. It appears as though I may not be able to install new ORACLE versions on the production machine. I do it on the test box and the Sysadmin does it on production box. THe reason given was that we are using volume managers and I cannot issue those commands since I do not have root privilege.
3. I do not have any control over backups since sysadmins are again backing up the entire filesystem to tape and unmounting/mounting file systems in the process, thus requiring root access.

It appears to me as though this is not the ideal set-up for aa DBA. I do understand that the relationship between DBA and sysadmin is defined differently in every company. But, can you comment if this set-up I described seems acceptable to you?

Before I voice my concerns to my boss, I want to run it by the experienced netters to know whether I am justified taking up my boss' time!

Any comments are gracefully welcome,

-Badri Received on Wed Feb 21 1996 - 00:00:00 CET