RE: Your frank opinion

Bob, I'm in the same boat. With now having 40 databases total, 10 prod, there are two of us, and I end up with most of the work (by choice, I need the experience.) I operate on the squeaky-wheel principle with tuning and am not able to practice backup and recovery due to all the development requests/problems. I am willing to put up with this for now since I am still fairly new to this. However, when I've got two kids at home in the not-so-distant future I don't think I'd tolerate this kind of environment. Not unless they pay me handsomely and let me work from home half the time.

I have two migrations to complete by the end of June. I don't think I'll be going north or golfing this entire month.

There is something to be said for working at McDonalds and keeping sane. Lisa

"Larry Strickland" <stricklandl_at_voyager.spjc.cc.fl.us> on 06/05/2000 11:44:30 AM

Please respond to ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com

To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> cc: (bcc: Lisa Koivu/GELCO)

Subject: RE: Your frank opinion

Bob,

We have a very similar environment with approximately 6 production databases and maybe 20 other databases, mostly small. About half of these are PeopleSoft databases. We also have 2 DBA's and that's it. Right now, we are doing an upgrade of PeopleSoft Financials from version 6.12 to 7.57 on Informix. Then we will do an Informix to Oracle upgrade of Financials and then we will do the 7.57 (and 7.6 for or HR/SA system) to 7.xx (whatever is out at the time).

To answer your question of how do we keep up, we don't. But we stay just current enough. Our biggest problem is that there is no one to download and install PeopleSoft patches. And that in itself is a full-time job!

I've worked 40+ hours in the last 3 days and plan on quite a bit more before the weekend. Fortunately, this doesn't happen too often, though. We decided to do the upgrade in house with some outside assistance. Last time we used PeopleSoft to do the upgrade and that was a disaster.

larry

At 06:06 AM 6/5/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>I regularly work more than 40 hours, although I try to keep it between 40
>and 50. Sometimes 60, but not often. And I don't have much time to do all
>the things that I would like to do. Like reading this list (I usually scan
>for things that catch my interest), tuning, clean-up, playing with new
>stuff, etc. I think a lot of the extra time is because of our environmnet.
>There are only 2 DBAs here, myself and another, and we have a ton of
>databases. There are about 33 databases that are used for development and
>QA. Of these, 6 are peoplesoft DBs and the rest are split between
>production copies and DBs for our new web site. A bunch of the new DBs also
>have multiple schemas, i.e. our development Broadvision DB has 14 full
>schemas. Full meaning that each is a complete Broadvision copy - all 227
>tables and associated application pieces. Production, right now, only
>consists of 4 databases, so there is much more work going on in the
>development area than in the production area.
>
>We also just did a Peoplesoft upgrade from 7.51 to 7.58 which included
>upgrading Oracle from 7.3.4 to 8.0.6. Luckily, we hired a consultant to do
>the upgrade for us. We did the Oracle work and he did the actual Peoplesoft
>work.
>
>Anyone else out there have an environment like this? How do you keep up
>with the work?
>
>Bob VanderMey
>Oracle DBA
>OrderZone.com, Inc.
>847 573-2687
>bvandermey_at_orderzone.com
>565 Lakeview Parkway, Suite 250
>Vernon Hills, IL 60061
>http://www.orderzone.com
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>Sent: Friday, June 02, 2000 12:37 PM
>To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
>How many of the DBAs out there frankly work more than
>40 Hrs a week on an average ? I have seen DBAs,
>specifically contrators (I'm one myself) put in 10 or
>12 Hrs a day on the paper. In reality, it's the 10-12
>Hrs they sit at work, either showing everyone how busy
>they are or creating work out of nowhere so that they
>could stay longer at work (and get the extra bucks).
>We've all had our chances working 24-36 Hrs on stretch
>in crisis situations, but in general, how much
>significant work does a DBA have. Most of the time I
>find it difficult to fill even the 40 Hrs in the
>timesheet. My favorite activity !! Browse this list.
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints!
>http://photos.yahoo.com
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> INET: sharmakdeep_at_yahoo.com
>
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--
Author: Larry Strickland
  INET: stricklandl_at_voyager.spjc.cc.fl.us

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