[geeks] Careeer shifting

[David Passmore]

On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 06:10:51PM -0400, James Sharp wrote:

> yup.  Sysadmins & application developers have better things to do with
> their time than make sure tablespace isn't filling, tables are optimized,
> indexes get built properly, table permissions are right, cross-DB
> authentication works right...the list goes on and on.

Speaking as someone who's been a programmer, an Oracle DBA, and a sysadmin,
and done a /lot/ of database programming...

I don't have any experience with databases such as Informix and Sybase
unfortunately. Oracle is based on decades-old technology. Why should you
have to manually size tablespaces? Why should you have to manually tune the
application? Why should you have to manually rebuild indexes (I understand
that Oracle 8i finally got around to automatic index-rebuilding)?

A smart database should just work. Oracle has created an industry of DBAs
who babysit applications which should be able to take care of themselves. If
someone wrote a good self-tuning relational database, they would be able to
/wipe the floor/ with Oracle. 

Oracle's recovery mechanisms aren't even very good. I've seen Oracle
databases corrupted more times than I can count. A database with a decent
recovery mechanism should *never* get corrupted except for media failure or
human error. 

I could go on... it amazes me that Oracle's database has gotten to be the
industry dominant one. It's just not very good. 

David