Re: Do programmers tune SQL?

I'll take a case of Lagavulin or Glenmorangie, you decide.

Email me off list for my shipping address.

Jared

On Friday 29 March 2002 18:03, Larry Elkins wrote:
> Greg,
>
> You *do* see DBA's doing the bulk of the SQL tuning work in many shops. But
> it's not necessarily because the developers, or at least some them, can't,
> or, that many of them don't care (and *many* of them never do give it a
> thought). I've seen places where the developers begged for the ability to
> turn on tracing in development, or to have a plan_table and/or the use of
> autotrace, and were denied. And other cases where the development, testing,
> and QA environments were so different from production that there was nearly
> no point.
>
> Anyway, just by virtue of their titles, I don't know that a DBA is any
> better at SQL tuning than a developer or vice versa (and I'm not pointing
> that comment at you, Greg, but just in general that I don't think the title
> of DBA or developer makes a difference). It really depends on their
> backgrounds and skill levels. I've seen, for the most obvious example, many
> DBA's and developers freak when they see a full table scan, never taking
> into consideration if that was the appropriate approach. Instead, they just
> lived by some rule that "full table scans are bad". You see lots of things
> like that.
>
> Anyway, as someone who started off as both a DBA and developer, and drifts
> back and forth between the two and still serving in both roles, I can see
> both sides. I know DBA's who rant about the developers not giving a flip
> about performance when they write their code, and in many cases it is true,
> the issue of performance was never considered. But I also know many
> developers who *do* care and are hindered from doing so. By the same token,
> I know a lot of DBA's who are very good at SQL tuning, and tuning and
> general, and many more who aren't.
>
> So, what we can we do? We can work with the developers (and DBA's) and
> mentor them. We can teach the tricks and efficient styles (whether SQL
> itself or application design in general). And it really helps if we can
> provide an environment that mimics production (dollars and budgets make
> that hard to do in many cases).
>
> Sorry for the length, but it touches on something I'm dealing with right
> now. I'm helping some developers who are getting hammered about why their
> code performs so poorly in production. Heck, it ran great in all the other
> environments, there's not much more that they could have done. And yes, I
> now sit in on the code reviews making suggestions when something could be
> done better, and testing their code and every SQL statement against
> production. Often times requires significant work in stubbing out the DML
> pieces and duplicating the same logic when doing so. But if they aren't
> given a "real" environment, and, they are interested, I have sympathy when
> seeing them hammered for poor performing code and SQL statements when they
> did everything they could with what they were provided.
>
> Oh well, end of the week rant of sorts. I'm sending everyone a case of
> their favorite scotch if they just ask ;-) Just a test to see if anyone
> makes it this far ;-)
>
> Regards,
>
> Larry G. Elkins
> elkinsl_at_flash.net
> 214.954.1781
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: root_at_fatcity.com [mailto:root_at_fatcity.com]On Behalf Of Greg Moore
> > Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 4:38 PM
> > To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> > Subject: Do programmers tune SQL?
> >
> >
> > What percent of developers know how to explain and trace SQL, interpret
> > these reports and tune?
> >
> > In my experience it's about 10%, so most SQL tuning is done by DBA's. Is
> > that about right?

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Author: Jared Still
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