Joel Garry wrote:
> Daniel Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:<1091761109.170763_at_yasure>...
>
>>If someone wants to troll for Sybrand I think the correct post would be
>>something like this:
>>
>>My boss just hired me as an Oracle DBA even thought my background in IT
>>consists of pounding sand. Anyway I found this icon with a yellow cross
>>on it. It is asking for something called "Host String". What should I do?
>>
>>Now that I expect would get Sybrand to respond with at least four
>>letters. ;-)
>
>
> When I was the oracle/unix support guy at vendor in the early/mid
> '90s, I used to get actual calls like that from new customers. But
> even worse: they would have a new unix box and some unix and oracle
> cd's, and a software tape, and I'd have to talk them from there. But
> hey, it was a living, they tended to at least be competent people in
> midsize shops and at least I could get them going a few months until
> they would get V7.x segmentation issues or whatever. It wasn't
> frustrating, it was rewarding to be helpful. Ocassionally I would get
> a combative DBA upset that the installation consultants wouldn't do
> their work for them - that I found frustrating.
>
> But later as a DBA in a big gov/aerospace environment, I'd see very
> much what you said, and there was _no_ excuse for it there (reasons,
> yes, bad though they may be). This group being worldwide and
> unmoderated is going to have some, uh, diversity. So I advocate going
> easy on the newbies, pointing them in the right direction, but I can
> see Sybrands point, the reality of DBA work is harsh and it is too
> much to ask for a newbie to have full responsibility in a production
> environment - it's just plain bad management.
>
> I just can't see sending a newbie to sqlserver, that is
> counter-productive for this group.
>
> jg
> --
> @home.com is bogus.
> Millions defrauded.
> http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040806/news_1n6fraud.html
I'd never send someone to SQL Server unless I thought them a troll.
But sometimes you don't do someone a favour by giving them an answer
knowing full well that their ability to carry it out successfully
is near zero whereas the likelihood they will damage their company's
data very high.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)
Received on Fri Aug 06 2004 - 18:02:45 CDT
