Originally posted by Axr2
I started this thread coz - I was recently called in to do root cause analysis on some issues on some critical machines. I noticed none of these machines/databases had been backed up in 6 months! The DBA's hadn't been monitoring it. No body was looking at the alertlogs..major batch processes were failing every night. No one bothered to check even, while the customer was in pain.

To top it all, a major incident happens. A tablespace had been in backup mode for several months. The machine crashes. The database startup obviously failed since one of the tablespaces was in a backup mode when it crashed. This group of DBA's decide that they need a full database recovery to fix it! (Talk of being incompetant). They wipe the existing database..then find that they didn't have a good backup either. They restore an age old database from 8/9 months ago and tell the customer/management that extensive corruption creeped in from several months ago. What a load of cr@p.
Holy Crap Axr2!! that's quite a tale! If I were a top exec of that company who lost that database and your investigation revealed exactly what you've posted, then I think the entire DBA team would be looking for a new job and I would black ball them. Also if the DBA's were from a consultant company I would be suing them for lost revenue.

We all know that in our world time is money. In a situation like that I think disciplinary action should start at the top and work its way down. Meaning, who where the managers that hired the DBA's? Did they check the DBA's background for skill set or were they fresh off the boat from ~insert 3rd world country here~? If they did and the supposed DBA's skills were up to par then the DBA's were not doing their job.
Ohhh dude this just boils my potatoes just thinking about your situation! yea, everyone has screw ups and it's expected, but the important thing is being able to learn from them and correct them if possible. We as DBA's have the companies life blood in our hands and unfortunately some of us don't realize what a huge responsibility we have. Some times I feel sorry for companies management when we get folks on here that some really dumb questions.

btw Congrats Jodie!!!