Re: Oracle 9i + Death of the DBA

"Phil Kaufman" <philk_at_dbcsmartsoftware.com> wrote in message news:<CMmcnQlpD7-fTRuiXTWJkw_at_golden.net>...
> I agree with Sybrand's observations for the most part, but I need to extend
> his thoughts on lack of formal education of developers, because I have been
> in this IT game for some time now, and it is so evident.
>
> Now I'm not saying that there doesn't exist DBA's that, errr, well, would be
> better apt at serving french fries rather than performing some simple DBA
> tasks. I know that they exist. But the biggest problem I see with
> developers is lack of education. Only in North America can you work on a
> project where a developer who has a geography degrees from some ho hum
> university/college leads a development project, who himself believes the
> traveling salesman problem must relate to recent price increases at the gas
> pumps. I've seen countless developers from some foreign country who clearly
> did not learn the same level of required training and teachings to perform
> adequately in the position of developer in North America. I have seen
> countless computer science degrees from foreign countries where
> unfortunately the standards of teachings is not up to North American
> standards. Ask them to describe the Red/Black Tree algorithm, and they draw
> a red tree trunk with black leaves and a bird's nest. These are the folks
> that have fallen into the developer role, and who never really excel at the
> position, simply because they lack basic knowledge that one gets from
> credited North American schools and courses; courses like structures,
> algorithms, database principals, etc., etc., etc. Seriously, take a close
> look at your project's development team, and think about each member's
> education background. I guarantee more then half are as I describe above.
>

I was almost embarrassed by not knowing what the algorithm was, until I did a bit of research and realized I started programming the year it was introduced; such things don't trickle down quickly. I really don't think it is an important thing for most business programming. Now, if the people working on CBO and index internals at Oracle don't know about it, that's another thing.

> What amazes me is how project leads throw more and more of these
> sub-standard developing resources at projects expecting them to bring up the
> level of productivity, when the end result is a larger underachieving
> development team. It's just disappointing.
>
> Just my daily rant folks.
>
> Phil
>
> P.S. For fun, go ask each developer in your project group(s) to describe the
> Red/Black Tree algorithm. Take score! Give bonus marks to any developer
> who can give a definition of NP-complete!

It's been decades since I had to program my own hashing or index routines that were more than trivial, the db handles all that stuff now. While it may be a good rant for some development situations, I can't see that dba's in general would need to care. Pretty much every one I've seen that's been through Oracle corp has had an MSCS, and they don't appear to be using much from that in their daily tasks, US educated or not. I _have_ seen some go for non-dba jobs using the buzzword-of-the-week during the dotcom madness, though. Where are they now?

>
> "n3tgan3sh" <iosonoproprio_at_libero.it> wrote in message
> news:bm6a9j$ihcik$1_at_ID-180684.news.uni-berlin.de...
> >
> > "Sybrand Bakker" <gooiditweg_at_sybrandb.nospam.demon.nl> ha scritto nel
> > messaggio news:fshbovg52ffo9rvk70d7t8pi6b4ku6c52e_at_4ax.com...
> > > On 9 Oct 2003 13:21:08 -0700, ed_zep_at_ntlworld.com (Ed) wrote:
> > >
>
> > > I also think Larry and Oracle are moving in a direction many smaller
> > > organizations don't need and don't want: they are basically satisfied
> > > with 7.3, they have been forced to upgrade to 8i, but they really
> > > don't need. Further 'improvements' of Oracle will only increase the
> > > reluctance to upgrade, as it will cost money to adapt everything to
> > > the newer version.
> >
> > Sybrand, do you permit to me to print this and hang it on my IT dept wall
> ?
> > :-)
> >
> >

Right on, Sybrand!

jg

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