ROLE OF A DBA

Folks,

Lets not get into targetting individuals. This is kind of a wrong notion that had been in exsistence in all areas. The question Gayathri posted is not only applicable to the DBAs, its also applicable to any behind the scene jobs. Same question can be directed to why the managers and CFOs are being paid high? There is always reasons and justifications behind every job title and they are all critical to the infrastructure of a good business system.

Due to the advancement in technology, these titles are of mere necessity. When the computers were introduced, the job of an operator was critical (whose duty is to sit and monitor and feed the card decs). But now the job is still in importance, with some change in titles. Like operators, system administrator, database administrator and etc. As the technological advancements come in, there will be a requirement to split the duties, which comes with new titles. One other thing is that when the advancements come in, you cannot place your foot on multiple boats and sail smoothly, so have to narrow your area of targets and specialize them. For that purpose, you also should not stop learning about new things as, they may become handy at times.

So, as you can see, the title of the job means somekind of special need on the persons' skill sets and would gurentee the helping hand at the time of crises.

I find this topic to be a interesting, so why not we explore it further, rather than getting agitated and passing some rash comments on individuals.

BTW, the name Gayathri, normally being used by a femal gender persons. :)


Cheers,
Sam

My environment has nearly 150 databases from Oracle 7.3 to 8.1.7 (and soon 9i). I share responsibility with 2 other DBAs.

In order to install and support the various versions of OAS and 9iAS, support Designer Users, plan and execute a successful upgrade strategy including Solaris and creating and maintaining the test environments to enable the users to do their work keeps us very busy.

There is always new technology, upgrades, changes of strategy, mergers, new product lines, downsizing, staff turnover, training, sick time, vacation, etc. With unpredictable regularity, one of the staff will spend 10-15 in any given week repairing a situation that wasn't foreseeable.

**** happens and it is necessary to have a professional who will keep cool and deliver the goods.

There are some DBAs that have an easy job. But it is clear that they will pay dearly when they try to change jobs and explain what they have or haven't been doing.

Yes in one of our client had a very good Hardware /application and what not .
The guy who was incharge did an export that was the only backup mode he had in mind .
The system crashed God only knows why .

He tried to bring the database .Nothing happaned .He created a new database and tried to do an import .
The import was hanging for hours and not a single data got imported .

I went to the client place tried the import
and got an

IMP-00037: Character set marker unknown
IMP-00000: Import terminated unsuccessfully.

The export dump was corrupt .Called Oracle support They said nothing can be done .


Finally One guy did though in 1 hour flat and extracted all the data and for the one hour job he took my 3 Months salary .I did not know what he did.Still I am breaking my head what he did and how he extracted the data .

Thanks Sam , only u were the person in the forum who could undertsand my Gender , others not.

Secondly here every body was in offence mode when they had to answer to my question.

My question was straight forward and i didnot mean that dba donot do any thing /no work / just monitoring but to find out what could be hidden jobs in that role when every thing is set up properly , what jobs needs to be figured out, what can come up as a new assignment in that dba role , like jeffs answer was a good one. the very first answer of his was really good.
i was looking out what could be other possibilities in that role ?

lastly when somebody asks u a question try to put yourself in his/her shoes /understand what he/she means and try to analyze and answer accordingly - DONT BE TOO QUICK TO THROW IN YOUR TWO CENTS WORTH....

sam thanks again for ur concern

- Gayatri

I played many roles in my 18 years IT career. My roles were Programmer, Developer, Project leader, Project manager, Assistant Manager (MIS), Deputy Manager (MIS), System Manager (MIS), System Architect, Software Consultant, Software Engineer, Application DBA, Maintenance DBA, Production DBA.

Which of those roles gave me more happiness and challenging work?
The answer is System Manager (MIS). I enjoyed my work when I was a System Manager(MIS).

I think the role of DBA is very small part in a system life cycle. But to many this is a bread and butter. And this role may be interesting to one when he/she is of young age.

guys and gurus

I would be more happy to see ur answers / thoughts / sharing work experience coming in and continuing , in this forum.

Gayatri Selvarajan

I went to an Oracle training class once and the instructor said something I thought was very good.

He said that a DBA who is paged and called upon to fix issues all the time are not necessarily the best DBAs. It is those who take proactive measures before disaster strikes, who are doing their jobs well.

When a database is functioning fine and nothing is going wrong, it means that the DBA is taking proactive measures daily to ensure that all predictable problems are being resolved before anyone else notices.

Also, a former co-worker who worked his way up from a data center operator at minimum wage to Sybase DBA with good salary said that he used to get paid for what he did, but now he gets paid for what he knows.

Gayatri, here's an small example of what I am currently working on. This is only for one system/application; I work on two. It's more than 8 hours of work a day.

Monitor the database - alert log, listener log, exports, about 7 user interfaces loading data into our database, etc.
Our database and applications are constantly evolving. Right now I have one database being used to OT&E db/application changes and one database being used to OT&E Cognos report changes/additions.
I have 7 different patches (changes to the db and/or application) currently being tested. Several of those patches are for the same process which loads data. I test the loading of the data and have spent hundreds of hours doing so since last Sept. When a patch is delivered, I have to review the patch to ensure that the developers have followed our standards. Standards that I wrote and documented. I then have to apply the patch to the OT&E environment and help troubleshoot any problems that arise. When the patches pass OT&E, then I apply then to production after hours. I also troubleshoot if a problem arises in production after a patch has rolled.
Review Oracle patchsets as they become available and apply as needed.
I also recently upgraded all of my databases for one application from 8.1.5 to 8.1.7.2.1. This was done after hours but had to be here during the day. In total I was at work that day 16 hours and into the next day for about 1 hour. There was a problem with some code compiling, so I had to troubleshoot and fix this.
I researched OPS and attended a class to see if we could use this technology. We need to goto 9i first. So now I'm researching 9i.
I have to change all database passwords and modify any scripts using a password every three months.
When changes are made to the environment, I must update all documentation.
Monitor the application and make suggestions for performance tuning the code.
I produce required database reports every month.
I refresh my OT&E databases on a regular basis.
I just created a copy of production to be used as a proof of concept for a new version of our application.
We are in the process of reconfiguring all of our hardware and will be moving databases not already on the EMC to the EMC.
We are buying new backend servers. Those will need to be configured and Oracle installed, etc.
For security reasons, I password protected our listeners and modified all documentation and scripts.

As soon as I get to take a breath and new project emerges.

Ok I am sorry if I used a little rash comments to Miss. ( NOT Mr. ) Gayatri. But look at first message she sent in this LOOOONG & Interesting thread. It was very offensive. She basically striked most of us that you guys make easy bucks and do nothing. I am sure most of you when you read it had same feeling and they she started to say "I am not convinced, I am not convinced " I think she still not convinced :) But anyway all I need is people have the whole picture of business then judge the job description. I do monitoring 10 instances everyday, last week the CPU usage went to %100 for no reason after several days try everthiung we found out Application went Banana at some point and a sequence reach tha Max-Value. Now my Boss asked me to look at 9i and give him a time plan to Upgrade. On a daily basis Developers ask me too many smart/stupid questions and much much more. So don't discount stress times we have and don't envy if we have relax time and just surfing internet for weeks :) Each job worth its value, make no mistake about it. Reread my Brain Surgeon example. Worth to say ofcourse some DBA are luckier and has more relax environment with a FATTT paycheck and some should work very hard and stress level will be very Hi. My 2 Cents.

And finally :

- every thing here is been taken care, every thing is running smoothly in ALL INSTANCES !!! so in day to day work situation what work he will be doing ? Just Monitoring !!!
how is he accountable.?

What the dba does when the situation is as you mentioned ?
Keep posting replies/questions in this forum !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, in turn as people find time post replies here, means that they have done everything for their databases to keep the things running. So, all of the "reply writers" are excellent DBAs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Howz that ????