Behavioral Deficiencies
by Alex Papadimoulis
in Feature Articles
on 2008-02-28
Shawn O. was not used to bright lights, smiling faces, or greetings like “hi Shawn, how are you today?” In fact, just about anything that wasn’t specifically intended to bring pain and misery to all had become foreign to him. It was simply par for the course. Shawn, after all, was an Oracle DBA. And not just any Oracle DBA, but one who sat on the company’s Database Code Review Council.
Like at many other Oracle shops, the Council at Shawn’s company was responsible for defining policies and procedures to make it virtually impossible for any developer within the company to make changes to their databases. For example, if a developer wanted to change, say, the columns retrieved from a single SELECT statement, he’d have to fill out a ream of paperwork, venture all the way up to the top floor, find his way to The Council’s chambers, humbly plead his case to The Council’s members – each of whom would be ensconced in darkness, wearing their traditional Oracle DBA robe – and then repeat the process several times after The Council ridicules him for missing paperwork, too little whitespace, too much whitespace, etc., and rejects his request for change. It’s just the way things work.