An attempt to describe the life of a DBA Manager in an IT Department of a company.

1. Mahesh Vallampati

2. Typically report to the VP/Director of IT
Operations
Considered the Back Office of IT Operations
Considered Important only when things are
broken
No credit for doing a good job
Typically has a contentious relationship with
Development Organization
Very little clout in the organization
Has very limited say in code movement into
production
Owns Performance Issues whether or not issues
are related to the DB or tied to code quality

3. Software Installation
Data Security
Development Support
Application and Database Availability
Avoiding Data Loss
Owns Database and by deduction Application
Performance Issues

4. Understaffed
Overworked
Under-Appreciated
Limited Career Advancement
Considered Out-Source-able
Skill Distribution is Skewed
Good DBA’s are a prized commodity

5. IOUG 2001 DBA Survey

6. IOUG 2001 DBA Survey

7. Overnight Jobs have failed
Reports are still running
Databases for Application Development have not
been cloned
Business Process Owner has escalated to IT
management
IT Development Manager complaining to anybody
who will listen
Have to get that status report out
Operational Users calling in reporting that screens are
hanging
Star DBA was paged overnight to address a backup
that failed
Wake him up!!!

8. Re-started Overnight Jobs
Reports are using in-efficient execution plans
Run Statspack reports
Got Lucky and found the root cause to be a statistics issue
Fixed the statistics
Send an update to the Business Process Owner and IT management
explaining an intricate stats issues (nobody cares)
Developers requesting code changes to production
Data Fixes being developed by Business Process Owners
CIO wants to know why the DBA team is “reactive” and not
“proactive”
Where is that contractor who was supposed to be bought on board?

9. Send out Outage Notifications
Send out Post-Mortem Reports on the Backup
Failure
Users of the System and Developers Take early
lunch as the DBA team is working on issues
Summoned to the Director/VP of IT Operations to
explain why there are so many issues
Still no answer of the back filling of the departure
of the other star Oracle DBA
The UNIX System Administrator is sulking that he
was woken up last night by the DBA to address
the backup issue and makes a snide remark
Where is my SAN Disk request?
Get Junk food from kitchen (No Soup for you!!!)

10. Systems Stabilizing
Cloning of Development Databases complete
Run Data Fix Scripts
Meeting with SOX Auditors
Star DBA comes over to complain that he will
start looking for a new job
DBA needs a vacation and comes in with a
vacation request
Next Weekend Release Planning Meeting
SQL Server License Compliance Meeting with
Microsoft Prep
HR Calling into request an audit of HR Database
Access

11. Get a Breather
Call Wife who is sulking as she has not been
called during the day
Talk to Software Vendor about a “new”
monitoring solution
Get a cold call from a recruiter who is interested
in placing DBA’s.
Get a complaint from a development manager
about a DBA being rude to his staff
PMO calls to let the team know that there will be
additional databases for new business initiatives
Get a note from a friend on “DBA costs”

13. Catch up on E-Mail/Voice Mail
Vendor demanding that the support invoice
better be paid or else
Send a note to purchasing
Note from HR Telling you and your team to
finish the on-line training on compliance
Drive-by from Production Support Manager
talking about how difficult his life is
Drive home