Comments on: Experts

By: Beginner/Expert « Oracle Scratchpad

Beginner/Expert « Oracle Scratchpad — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:36:00 +0000

[...] Jonathan Lewis @ 7:34 pm UTC Jun 3,2010 I mentioned some time ago the presentation I did at Open World 2009 and Miracle Open World called “The Beginner’s Guide to becoming an Expert”. Over [...]

By: joel garry

joel garry — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:16:37 +0000

From the managers point of view, he should not have a “no-expert” team. He should have subject matter experts, and should have support from upper management for advancing career paths, as well as cross-training. The point of allowing ordinary DBA’s to become expert is to create an environment where problems can be solved internally, much faster and cheaper than using Oracle support or third party consultants. An organization overly focused on cost-savings, running too lean, lacks good strategic planning, and will suffer additional replacement and organizational knowledge costs as people burn out or otherwise decide to leave.

Where it becomes less clear is on DBA tasks that are very time-consuming, require a lot of training, and are relatively rare. It could be that reading trace files and that sort of thing may fall into this category – so hopefully tools become available that help this along. There is a big hole between EM and such tools, and in my opinion Oracle should provide such tools without charge as part of the environment. I’m sure that’s a minority viewpoint :-D Also, the database shouldn’t be a mysterious black box that condescendingly knows more about what you want it to do than you do.

By: Karl Reitschuster

Karl Reitschuster — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:53:56 +0000

No I cannot imagine this too because Jonathan seems to be very unique and special ;-) – but because i know as a smart manager that smart DBA’s svae a lot of time and *money* i will establish a lead DBA in that group ensuring best ROI for me and my company
/Karl

By: Yi

Yi — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:47:18 +0000

From the manager’s point of view, it is not necessary, even not desirable, to have an “all expert” team, in any area. Can you imagine a team that all the DBAs in it are a little “Jonathan-like”? So there is no point to allow time for ordinary DBA to become expert DBA.

Best Regards,

By: Experts « RNM

Experts « RNM — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:04:43 +0000

[...] Filed under: timemanagement — rnm1978 @ 14:04 A brilliant posting here from Jonathan Lewis on the subject of Experts. He in turn is quoting Chen Shapira: “DBAs are under a lot of [...]

By: Jonathan Lewis

Jonathan Lewis — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:16:48 +0000

I mentioned the "Oracle Closed World" conference at the start of this little piece - I've just discovered that it even got a mention in the daily newsletter for Oracle Open World. (That Norgaard person seems to know, and be known, by everyone in the Oracle universe).

By: Log Buffer #166: a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs | Pythian Group Blog

Log Buffer #166: a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs | Pythian Group Blog — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:22:07 +0000

[...] more resources bookmarked, but these are a great starting point. Jonathan Lewis’s article Experts is somewhat related and has great advice as [...]

By: Karl Reitschuster

Karl Reitschuster — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:18:42 +0000

Timur,
i am sure you have to do do your work as dba in an intelligent way. Doing the stuff which repeats not manually but with scripting, tools and so on, being preemptive to avoid issues. You have to be well organized – no doubt about this.
Keep in mind that most databases running with application developed causing database issues. In real world a database does not mean running only one application on it -it could be 10 or more;

Now to the 2 DBA’s with the ability to maintain 1k databases. With a release cycle of 3 Months and 1 application per database these dba’s would have to manage 10 Software releases per day;
With all that stuff of backing up the database, preparing and checking the releases – dealing with web-applications to plan the change with about 20 subscribers/change and so on.

Good luck :-)
No – we both know that real world is a little bit more complex than any white paper published to improve your performance/workflow
/Karl

By: Timur Akhmadeev

Timur Akhmadeev — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:53:51 +0000

>a DBA production staff being responsible for 60! production database servers each DBA
… and they are doing it manually in CLI? I don’t think so. IIRC, one of Oracle magazines mentioned 2 DBAs together managing something about several thousands databases (I don’t remember exact number, but it was thousands – I’m sure). Guess how they do that.
>And 2-5 projects…
In my not so humble opinion, it’s normal.
>keeping them hot all the time
That’s the problem: for some reasons, they can’t keep up with the incoming issues. Why that happens is probably off topic; I can think of different reasons, but the two I’ve already mentioned seems to be the most reasonable to me.

By: Karl Reitschuster

Karl Reitschuster — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:01:59 +0000

@Timur i cannot agree with you; i know a DBA production staff being responsible for 60! production database servers each DBA; And 2-5 projects keeping them hot all the time. Weekend Action because of release stuffs. This is heavy load and nobody sees the fruit of the hard work compared to a developer which could produce some code hopefully is working ;-)
My personal experience is we live in a time overloading employees with work and accusing them if they reach not the expected payload; Not good times -at the end for everyone

/Karl