RE: all time worst question I have been ever asked as a DBA

  • From: Herring Dave - dherri <Dave.Herring@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "kevin.lange@xxxxxxxxxx" <kevin.lange@xxxxxxxxxx>, "oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:02:51 +0000

Priceless!

I had a very similar episode, but with MOS.  Around 10 years ago we had a GS160 
where management didn't want to fully license Oracle and their app across all 
CPUs.  Being NUMA they had me figure out ways to keep all processes on a 
certain set of CPUs (really QBBs).  I struggled with MOS for a long time trying 
to get out details of how Oracle will detect and work with NUMA architecture 
and at one point the consultant tried to hand me off to a user "expert" on this 
type of thing - me.

It was one of those moments when too many "snappy answers to stupid questions" 
occurred that I couldn't say anything.  Kind of like when I was paged in the 
middle of the night and the caller said their app failed on a "uni-queue", then 
5 minutes later I found out what type of "uni-queue" - a "uni-que index".

DAVID HERRING
DBA
Acxiom Corporation
EML   dave.herring@xxxxxxxxxx
TEL    630.944.4762
MBL   630.430.5988 
1501 Opus Pl, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA
WWW.ACXIOM.COM  
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From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Lange, Kevin G
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 11:30 AM
To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: all time worst question I have been ever asked as a DBA

In a former life, I called the help desk because I was having an issue with my 
machine connecting to our local Oracle database that I was the DBA on.  I was 
prety sure it was some issue with the client but we did not get to admin our 
own PCs so I was out of luck in doing anything about it myself .
 
The help desk actually told me to "Shut your PC down by powering it off.   Now 
turn it on.  When you see the OS/2 load screen, shut it down real fast."  He 
told me to do this 3 times.   Wondering where he was going with this, I did 
it.  I was stuck without a connection anyway.  He then told me "OK.  Your 
machine should be fixed now.  Go ahead and connect.".   I tried.  And, as I 
expected, the failure still happened.
 
He next said "OK.  Let me call the Subject Mater Expert I have on record in 
your location."     As I was waiting for this to happen, my other line range.  
It was the Help Desk calling me about this guy who was having trouble 
connecting to our local Oracle Database.
 
You think he might have noticed a simularity in the names.   

________________________________________
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Amaral, Rui
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 11:11 AM
To: 'nilosegura@xxxxxxxxx'; kevin.lidh@xxxxxxxxx
Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: all time worst question I have been ever asked as a DBA
Or:

We don't need to backup the database. We can rebuild our 3 terabyte db with our 
text files! 

________________________________________
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Nilo Segura
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 12:08 PM
To: kevin.lidh@xxxxxxxxx
Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: all time worst question I have been ever asked as a DBA

I got a phone call from somebody who could not print a document, he did it 
because in the login banner there was a message saying something like "call 
this number for oracle database problems".

printer problems = oracle database problems   (a well known axiom...)

yeah... right :)
On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Kevin Lidh <kevin.lidh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A good friend of mine used to say, "If it has a 'D' in it, it's a database 
issue."  When I was an DEC Rdb DBA, I used to get paged for issues even whey 
they had determined it didn't touch a database...just in case it was a database 
issue.

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