DBA Tips and Techniques

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As you have seen in this chapter, the DBA can have a variety of duties and responsibilities. How you perform these duties and live up to these responsibilities will contribute to how the user community feels about your company's DBAs and its Information Systems (IS) department in general. This section is advice concerning how to present yourself to the user community and how to handle delicate situations. These tips and techniques might not directly apply to your specific situations, so you should use your own judgment.

Dealing with the User Community

Depending on your specific duties, you might not deal directly with the user community. More likely than not, however, you will deal with users at least on occasion. The following sections present a few ways to make dealing with end users go a little more smoothly.

The Customer Is Always Right

Be diplomatic. Even if the customer (the user community) is giving you incorrect information, don't be controversial. The end user might not understand the problem completely or might not be able to describe the situation correctly. In any case, don't contradict the customer. Instead, be sympathetic and learn whatever you can about the problem from that person. After all, the reactions of people who use the system every day might be your best indication that a problem exists.

Listen

Listen to the user community. Become familiar with who the users are and what they do. At least on occasion, visit with end users and ask them how they think the system is performing. The user community is often the first to recognize that system performance is degrading.

Follow the Golden Rule

As you know, the Golden Rule is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Don't degrade or contradict others in public, even if you are right. It is much nicer and more effective to educate users rather than contradict them. It will help you in the long run to gather allies rather than cause resentment. Taking this tack will help you become a DBA whom others respect.

System Tuning

System tuning is an important duty of the DBA. This section offers a couple of tips that can help you more effectively tune and maintain the system. One important tip to remember is that it is always a good idea to change only one thing at a time when tuning a system. By following this practice, you can easily determine which changes have improved system performance and which changes might have degraded system performance. Keeping good records also makes it much easier to tune the system.

The former suggestion is often difficult to follow if performance has degraded to the point that the situation is considered an emergency. In these cases, it is often necessary to use a "shotgun approach," in which multiple components are upgraded simultaneously. By upgrading several components at a time, you have a better chance of improving performance, but you might not learn anything about the cause of the problem. This tactic might also combine two or more changes that cancel each other out, thus providing no performance improvement at all.

Dealing with a Crisis

Every DBA has to deal with the occasional crisis. Here are a few tips to help you through those times.

Don't Panic

Problems that appear to be emergencies often turn out not to be urgent after some investigation. But it is easy for performance problems to escalate and become emergencies. By remaining calm, you can avoid costly mistakes. Sometimes it is better to walk away from the problem for a few hours and get some rest than to make a mistake that might add to the problem. Don't be afraid to solicit help if you need it. Taking on a problem that you are not prepared to handle might lead to more problems. Take it easy and don't panic.

Don't Jump to Conclusions

Verify the problem yourself. Don't just jump in based on what others have told you. It is not uncommon for a problem to be exaggerated or misinterpreted by the time the news gets to you. It is to your benefit to not take reports at face value; investigate the facts yourself.

Use Caution

Many mistakes are caused by someone's rushing to solve a problem. Some mistaken repairs are even worse than the original problem. Take your time. You can make a problem worse by working too fast and not being careful enough. Your first goal should be "Don't make the problem worse."

Get Some Rest

Don't work on little or no sleep. This is a disaster waiting to happen. It is better to fix problems when you are alert and coherent. The result of pushing yourself too hard might be to create a problem that is harder to fix. Take care of yourself. Don't make yourself sick.

Call for Help

If a problem gets too big for you to handle, don't worry about calling in some extra help. Plenty of specialists have the expertise to help you through your crisis. There is no shame in calling in help. In fact, calling in the right expert can enhance your reputation.