RE: Separation of Duties...

Hi Charles

I've seen this at many places as well, but clearly in those cases there is
already a separation of duties. Operations/admin and development/dba work to
give it some labels.

My point was more directed at people wearing many hats to call themselves a
dba (where it's warranted) rather than a sysadmin because the ibox doesn't
need a dba. Just makes it sounds like there's no database to the uninitiated
although it's more a result of there being less traditional dba work.

The kind of shop you are describing is also the ones where the ops guys
tended not to do any scripting (i.e. CL or RPG programming) even for
Operational tasks, although a unix admin would normally do this.

If you are going to do backup and recovery you need to understand more than
a bits about the database especially now that we have triggers, stored
procedures, sql packages, journals and the like to consider. I've usually
seend a dba-type person doing database restores on other platforms (as
distinct from file system recoveries)

I've always been a believer that the people doing the tasks you describe
ought to have a whole lot more knowledge than they often do (for whatever
reason) to make themselves better at their jobs. If the box is a database
machine, how can you do any job on the box and (effectively) ignore the
database ?

But I take your point :)

Regards
Evan Harris

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx

[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Behalf Of Wilt, Charles
Sent: Thursday, 1 November 2007 8:33 a.m.
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Separation of Duties...

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Evan Harris
Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 2:55 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: Separation of Duties...

Hi Steve

Over the years I've come to the conclusion that those individuals that
call themselves system admins would be better calling themselves DBA's
who also do a bit of system admin since they (should) effectively be
doing both tasks anyway. They would have more credibility with the
unix guys and possibly it would be easier to justify pay increases :)

See my experience is the other way around.

System i admins handle backup/recovery, PTFs, OS upgrades, hardware

upgrades,

ect. But don't really understand RDBMS. Instead it is the System i
developers who do the DB admin duties.

Of course in a small shop where I've always worked till now, the

developer(s)

do development, DB admin, and system admin.

Charles