RE: DBA Job Functions

At my last company, whenever there was a problem, the first place checked was the database. Because the DBAs were the ones who could provide answers. The other tiers were generally in the dark.

Mike Tefft

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Sheehan, Jeremy Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2018 8:57 AM
To: gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: DBA Job Functions

I just wish that the application teams would understand just that. Most people start at the database because they want to check if it is someone else’s problem before they start troubleshooting their systems.

I had someone come to be with an issue a few weeks back. Some users could not perform actions in the application. I asked which users. The response? Users at a particular site. When I pressed asking about users at other sites, no one else had a problem. Database problem? Nope! Network issue. The application is centralized, but used by 6 distinct sites.

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org<mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org> [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Mladen Gogala Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 10:11 PM To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org<mailto:oracle-l_at_freelists.org> Subject: Re: DBA Job Functions

Jeremy, it never is a database problem. You can always blame network. Try as they may, network engineers can never prove their innocence. If an application is slow, it's always the network. Application service can't reach the database and you can always show "waiting for more data from the client" wait events to prove that your network is slow. The next in line are system administrators. Is that app server swapping? How much CPU is it using? The art of being a good DBA involves knowing how to find the appropriate culprit.

Joking aside, it really never is a database problem. What is slow is always an application, not the database. Database is just storage, nothing else. It's not the garage it's slow. When I was a DBA, I once got the following complaint: "the database is slow in the northern half of the sales room, but is fast in the southern half". This intrigued me so much that I accepted the claim that "the database is slow". What ended up being the problem was the router. The router for the northern part of the room was plugged in the router port that was blinking red.

You always start troubleshooting from the application. That is the lesson from the Cary Millsap's book. It's simply incredible how long it takes for that simple and obvious message to sink in.

On 02/28/2018 02:58 PM, Sheehan, Jeremy wrote: HAHAHAHA! #truth

Perhaps proving that it isn’t a database problem can be added to the list?

From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill_at_gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 2:52 PM To: Sheehan, Jeremy <JEREMY.SHEEHAN_at_fpl.com><mailto:JEREMY.SHEEHAN_at_fpl.com> Cc: oracle-l-freelist <oracle-l_at_freelists.org><mailto:oracle-l_at_freelists.org> Subject: Re: DBA Job Functions

CAUTION - EXTERNAL EMAIL Also included: everything the DBA cannot get someone else to do.

Jared Still
Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist Principal Consultant at Pythian
Pythian Blog http://www.pythian.com/blog/author/still/ Github: https://github.com/jkstill

On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 11:18 AM, Sheehan, Jeremy <JEREMY.SHEEHAN_at_fpl.com<mailto:JEREMY.SHEEHAN_at_fpl.com>> wrote: Hello Guru’s,

My boss is asking me to compile a list of typical job functions for a DBA. I came up with a brief list, but would like to hear any other recommendations that you might have. What he said was, “We don’t want to go into great detail, but not be too vague either. Somewhere between the 10,000ft and 1,000ft view.

Agile Work
Backup/Recovery
Change Deployment
Database Design
Database Install
Documentation
DR Activities (testing/maintenance)
Lifecycles
Performance Tuning/Monitoring
Scripting DB/Host
Solution Design
On-call/Operations

Thanks in advance,

Jeremy

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Mladen Gogala

Database Consultant

Tel: (347) 321-1217
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Fri Mar 02 2018 - 13:29:46 CET