How deep to dig – Another Opinion and Another Good Blog

I think I’ve posted before about how deep a good DBA should dig into solving issues, as opposed to fixing them as soon as possible and moving on to the next urgent task.

Well, a friend of mine, Neil Chandler, has just posted on this topic, giving his reasons why you don’t run a 10046 trace on production. Neil raises some good points about how difficult it can be to get permission to do something as intrusive as a 10046 trace on a production system as well as the fact that most problems can be solved way before you get down to the level of tracing. Especially if it is not your job to go around solving the problems that have stumped the in-house team, which is the lot of many people who are recognised as being very good with Oracle.

That leads me onto a slightly different topic. For every one of those technicians who’s names you know there are at least a dozen who are just as good but not as visible. Some of us choose to make more “noise” {blogging, presenting, writing articles} so we become visible. Others also support the user community but in a less noticeable way, some even positively choosing to keep a lower profile. Neil is one of those. He’s a very good Oracle and SQL*Server DBA and also very knowledgeable about Unix OS’s and SANs/storage {though he would maybe argue he is not – don’t believe him}. When he comes along to the pub his is an opinion worth listening to {once he’s finished demeaning me that is, and I’m sure he will give me a hard time about this article about him next time we meet} and when I’ve asked his opinion he has never failed to help. Neil also supports the UKOUG, he’s been deputy chair of one of the SIGs since it’s inception – but he refuses to be chair, has kept away from presenting and he keeps in the background.

So, I was very happy when Neil started blogging. It is a mixture of technical stuff and observations on the IT world, all written in a very comfortable style – Look back at his previous post on timestamps not being impacted by FIXED_DATE. A nice piece of information to tuck into your bag of “things to be aware of”.

So, a belated welcome to the world of blogging Neil. I think it is a blog worth watching.