14 PART I u T HE JOB OF THE ORACLE DBA

This chapter challenges you to consciously consider the job of the database administrator
and the possibilities of which tasks are performed by the DBA and which are
left to others. All too often, this division of responsibilities just happens. Perhaps
something goes wrong, so the most competent individual in the organization is
assigned to ensure that it does not happen again. Perhaps it has “always” been done
that way. Take some time when reading this chapter to consider which ones should
be done by the DBA, given your individual situation.
First, the chapter presents some typical situations that I have encountered in my
consulting travels. This material serves to present how others have arranged their
job descriptions. Then you will explore a list of tasks and what is involved with these
each. Finally, you will examine common threads that should be woven into all
database administration schemes. It is important to remember that there is no one
absolutely right solution. Instead, you have to find the solution that fits your
situation at a given moment. Odds are that as technology progresses, the list of tasks
will change, but that is no reason not to have a plan for today.
Recall that in the days when ships were wood and men were iron, data was stored
in flat files. There were no database administrators, although there were often
senior programmers who kept track of the data stored on various files and tried to
set standards for how and where information was stored. Data was often stored in
enormous decks of computer punch cards that were stored in large boxes. Many
potential computer lovers may have turned away from the field after their deck of
punch cards scattered onto the floor just as they were ready to run that job one final
time.
Once corporations got hooked on the idea of storing valuable corporate data on
computers, money became available to store data on disk drives. At that time, disk
drives with under 100M capacity sold for tens of thousands of dollars. This created
the beginnings of the database administrator job. People were assigned to ensure
that data was not being duplicated, that it was stored in an efficient manner, and
that unnecessary data was purged.
Corporate data storage became a full-fledged addiction. Executives loved being able
to find information that had been locked away in paper files and to calculate costs
and delivery schedules far faster than ever before. In walked software vendors to
feed this habit. They noticed that every data application had a large amount of
common code. These routines included such basic functions as finding and retrieving
a row efficiently and writing a new record. They developed common routines in
packages that would be purchased, thereby improving development productivity.