THE CONCEPT OF A DATABASE ADMINISTRA TOR

Before starting work as an Oracle database administrator, it is interesting to
consider how this job came into being. Early data storage mechanisms, such as tape,
card decks, and flat files were owned and maintained by the programmers who
developed the application (only they understood how these beasts were put together).
Organizations tired of writing search and maintenance routines for each
new application, and data set sizes grew, especially those stored online on magnetic
disks. Specialized software packages designed to manage stored data were developed.
Over time, the complexity and utilities for these database management
systems grew. This created the need for a database administrator who understood
the inner workings of these packages and could get the most out of them. It also
created careers for many individuals.
It is sometimes interesting as a consultant to guess the types of computers that an
organization has had in the past based solely on the job titles. Personnel systems
tend to change very slowly and the job responsibilities may change, but the titles
remain. IBM actually published a fair amount of literature to its mainframe
customers regarding recommended organizations for the data center. These organizations
tend to have groups such as operations support, technical support,
database administration, and operations. All of these are headed by a separate
manager reporting directly to the data center manager (who often goes by the title
of director or chief information officer). Organizations that grew up with VAXes and
other minicomputers tend to have groups of operators (perhaps with a shift
supervisor, but not often), an all-powerful system administrator (or one per system
if you were lucky), and the database administrator. This is a warning that you may
inherit a legacy and expectations based on what IMS, DB2, or RdB database
administrators did on another computer platform. One of the goals of this book is to
provide you with some suggestions as to tasks that the Oracle DBA should be
performing, along with the justifications for these tasks.
It is important to remember that you are becoming a specialist in the Oracle
relational database management system. Having worked on Sybase, Informix,
dBASE, and other database management systems, I appreciate the differences
between the various systems. Oracle’s sound market share and trends towards
down-sizing, right-sizing, client-server, and so forth should give you a warm fuzzy
feeling about future job security for talented Oracle DBAs. However, never lose sight
of your position in the marketplace. My brother spent a brief tour of duty as a
8 PART I u T HE JOB OF THE ORACLE DBA
recruiter in the computer industry. He related to me that one of the hardest parts
of that job was when someone with a family to support came to him after being laid
off. The story usually went that they loved his work, felt his $80,000 salary was
justified, but they had to convert from the old Unisys (or Wang or ...) system and the
database on which he was an expert did not run on the new platform. In one case,
my brother found that there were only two or three installations of that database
package left in the entire country. Enough said—if you plan on making a living as
a database administrator, it is always wise to keep an eye to what is becoming
marketable in the industry.