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Re: Oracle DBA Metrics

From: Brian Peasland <peasland_at_edcmail.cr.usgs.gov>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 14:05:15 GMT
Message-ID: <3A1A811B.6FF42B21@edcmail.cr.usgs.gov>

> I am putting together a proposal that requires a great deal of
> benchmark/metric type data. For example, how many DBAs are needed to
> successfully manage (n) number of instances, etc, etc, etc...

Ed,

Asking how many DBAs are needed to manager a specific number of instances is like asking how many mechanics are required to service a specific number of cars. How good are the mechanics? Seasoned mechanics can service more cars than a rookie out of school. What are the cars used for? A car used strictly on the highway will require considerably less work than a snowplow during a tough upper midwest winter. What type of car is it? Surely it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that two differently engineered vehicles will have different service needs.

So the big questions are:

   How good is your DBA? A rookie might be better served with a few instances while a seasoned vet can handle much more.

   What application is running against the database? We have a variety of commercial off the shelf (COTS) packages and applications developed in-house. The databases that run the COTS packages require very little intervention (as a rule of thumb) compared to those developed in-house. For instance, we have one DBA who works strictly on databases running in-house apps. He is busy working with developers to get the app designed correctly. We have another DBA who works alot with COTS packages. Once the database is set up and the COTS package installed correctly, it becomes a matter of just "baby sitting" the database. This isn't always correct though. Other COTS packages like Oracle Financials or SAP require a TON of work. And some of our in-house developed packages require very little work once it has rolled into production.

   What type of database are you running? A full fledged RDBMS package (such as Oracle) will require more work than using something simpler like MS Access.

   How well was the application designed? A poorly designed application will require much more work over the lifetime of the product than one designed correctly.

I'm not sure what other metrics you are looking at. Database size perhaps? Again, there are no hard & fast rules here. I have some databases that are big which require little work. And others that are big and require a lot of work. Transaction rate? One of my databases with the highest transaction rates requires little work. Another database with low transaction rate requires a lot of work. Generally, a rule of thumb is that database sizes and transaction rates is proportional to the amount of work a DBA will have to do. But I have indicated that this is not always the case.

HTH,
Brian

-- 
========================================
Brian Peasland
Raytheons Systems at
  USGS EROS Data Center
These opinions are my own and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of my 
company!
========================================
Received on Tue Nov 21 2000 - 08:05:15 CST

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