How Are The Challenges Different for Internet DBAs? Roger Schrag Database Specialists, Inc.

Today’s Session Introduction (a little about the author) Technology challenges facing internet DBAs Other challenges

My Background Application developer at Oracle Corporation Oracle DBA at Fortune 500 companies Oracle DBA at internet startup Internet DBA consultant Manage team of internet DBAs

Technology Challenges Facing Internet DBAs Development tools Educating others 24 by 7 operation Reads vs. writes Development and test environments Backups and fault tolerance Scalability Budgets

Development Tools Cross-platform languages –Perl, Java, C, C++ Proprietary languages (grudgingly) –PL/SQL Application framework products –Net Dynamics, Cold Fusion, Dynamo Where are the Oracle tools? You mean Oracle offers more than just a database?

Internet DBA as Educator Native SQL functionality –“How do I prevent my query from returning duplicate rows?” Avoid re-inventing the wheel –“So you think I should use a GROUP BY clause instead of writing my own sort routine in Perl?” Design principles –“Why should I declare a primary key constraint when I can just create an index instead?”

True 24 by 7 Operation Dynamic instance parameters –ALTER SYSTEM SET = Avoid free space fragmentation –Uniform extent sizes are a winner Anticipate future needs –“We want to run in archivelog mode soon, but we haven’t thought about how to manage the archived redo logs.” Think outside the box –“Can we move the temporary tablespace to the new RAID set without taking the site offline?”

Reads vs. Writes Many internet databases are practically read-only Some are write intensive Read vs. write behavior impacts configuration decisions –SGA component sizes –Redo log placement –Use of RAID –Backup and recovery strategies

Development and Test Environments “So you think we should have a separate database for development?” “Why shouldn’t the entire development team know the production DBA password?” Volume testing and capacity planning are challenging! –Number of users unknown –Don’t know how people will use the application –Difficulty simulating randomness of human behavior

Backups and Fault Tolerance Often a back burner project – “We must always be up.” – “We have a script that exports the database once a week. Isn’t that good enough?” Standby databases – Minimal down time – Not an extra cost “option” – 8i standby databases can be used for reporting too

Backups and Fault Tolerance (continued) Oracle Parallel Server –Licensing costs –Added complexity –“Server pinging” performance problems prior to 8i

From proof-of-concept to millions of hits per day Transitioning from a few folks with an idea to a household name “So do you think you could port our application from MySQL to Oracle… today?” Scalability

Budgets Funded projects vs. the not-so-funded Oracle licenses cost $$$$ –You can’t leverage the Oracle technology if you can’t pay for it –“Say, why don’t you just write us some PL/SQL to push data around so we don’t have to buy the Enterprise Edition of Oracle?” Fighting fires caused by lack of budget –Squeezing out a few more bytes of storage –Compensating for undertrained staff

Other Challenges Facing Internet DBAs Corporate culture Work environment Staff turnover

Corporate Culture This is a cool place to work –Ping pong, foosball, nerf paraphernalia –All the soda and junk food you can eat Power to the people –“We’ll move our weekly team meeting from 10:00 to 11:00, because most folks seem to have trouble getting in by 10:00.” –“Survey results are in. The theme for all new server names will be serial killers.”

Corporate Culture (continued) Smart people enjoy learning –Designating one developer as DBA –“How hard could this stuff be?” –Lack of perceived value of experienced DBAs

The Work Environment Physical space –Crowded due to budget or explosive growth –Eclectic, or just plain weird Internet time –Plan for next week, not for next month or year –Analysis and design go out the window –“Our test plan? We put it in production and see what happens.” –Constant change of direction Flexibility and agility are key

The Staff Revolving Door The folks who designed the system are long gone Documentation: obsolete or non-existent Staff can be hard to get a hold of –Virtual employees –Working from home –Flex time

The Internet Is Changing Everything… …Even for DBAs Technical issues Work issues The pace of change

Contact Information Roger Schrag Database Specialists, Inc. 388 Market Street, Suite 400 San Francisco, CA