Path: newssvr20.news.prodigy.com!newsmst01.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!in.100proofnews.com!in.100proofnews.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Daniel Morgan Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.server Subject: Re: Oracle 9i + Death of the DBA Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 08:40:55 -0700 Organization: ATS Message-ID: <1065800469.383277@yasure> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <58e9f9da.0310091221.5204a95b@posting.google.com> In-Reply-To: <58e9f9da.0310091221.5204a95b@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cache-Post-Path: yasure!unknown@pond178.drizzle.com X-Cache: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 40 Xref: newssvr20.news.prodigy.com comp.databases.oracle.server:245036 Ed wrote: >I was wondering what people think about 9i's new features that >supposedly significantly decrease or at least alter the duties of the >DBA. > >Is anyone re-thinking their future career path because of it? > >Will there be such a great need for DBAs in the future? > >Any sensible comments appreciated. > >Ed. > > If by DBA you mean the guy that installs, configures, does backup and restore, and says no every time someone asks for select privilege on v_$session: Absolutely. In fact I'll supply the nails for the coffin. If by DBA you mean the job of managing the database and all of its associated services and applications such as app server, web services, XML, SOAP, Java, tuning, debugging, and making decisions on how to optimize architecture. No. The DBA that learned the business with v6 or 7 and hasn't learned much since will be as employable in 10 years as someone whose skill is RGB or dBASE or Fox or Ingress. There will be some jobs holding legacy systems together. But there will frequent and poignant reminders that Darwin was correct. -- Daniel Morgan http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)