Featured Article(s)
Increasing Performance Using the Oracle 11g PL/SQL Function Result Cache
Oracle 11g has a new performance enhancing feature called the PL/SQL Function Result Cache. This feature retains the results of a PL/SQL function call in memory enhancing performance by not continually re-executing the function. This article describes the new PL/SQL Function Result Cache
Not Sure What You Need To Do For Recovery?
We have a wizard for that! Acronis can help, plain and simple. With a quick and easy to use wizard, you can be assured that you’re covered, that your system can be restored and back online quickly and effectively. Stop guessing about whether you have the right things in place and relax, with the Acronis Disaster Recovery wizard. Get more information here.
Follow-Up On DBA Roles
Terry: "My last position was nearly 75% administration and 20% application upgrades/installs. We had SQL server sprawl and the admin side consumed a lot of my time. At my current job, my predecessor was totally the opposite of what I had been doing, 90% development and maybe 10% administration. After 8 weeks, I’m still trying to ensure things are accurate from an admin perspective with respect to backups, DR planning, database maintenance, etc.(almost there!). For the foreseeable future, I believe I’ll wind up being 25% administration, 50-75% development and whatever is left doing application upgrades/installs. DBA should really stand for database ANYTHING.
During the interviewing process nearly all the companies I talked with were looking for someone to do what I’m doing now, pretty much the same breakdown. Definitely not what I was accustomed to after nearly 20 years with my previous employer (the last six or so as the DBA). Maybe that wasn’t the real world and this is? I’m curious to see what’s happening in other parts of the community but I truly believe we’re not “just” administrators anymore!"
Jim: "As a developer in a small firm that does primarily web applications, I know how easy it is to slap a database on an existing SQL Server, write the application that it supports, and post it. I also know the hours of agony and frustration that hit when a hacker takes the application down. It is at that point that you begin to understand that backup, recovery, security, disk space management, and overall server usage are not optional components of your application, they are an integral and vital part. Requiring a developer to assume those roles doubles the time it takes to finish the application. Asking a DBA to be the developer means you risk losing your hard work when a backup doesn’t run correctly but nobody catches it (too busy programming/developing), or when you want to recover yesterday’s transactions and you can’t because the backups failed. Or you spend 24 hours trying to recover from an external attack that could have been prevented by the most recent security patches, if the DBA hadn’t been the developer, or vice versa.
As far as I am concerned, there is too much involved in a live database application for a single role to support. A dedicated DBA, whose function is to make sure the database keeps working, is as important as the developer who creates and supports the application. I honestly don’t see the two functions ever being successfully merged into one."
Featured White Paper(s)
Protecting Microsoft SQL Server
Although SQL Server offers options for database protection and recovery, none of them is intended to provide a complete disas… (read more)
Cool Features for SQL Server 2008
Are you ready to change the way you administer and develop SQL Server? Scheduled for release this year, SQL Server’s first si… (read more)