Yes, you might work very hard to try to keep things under control through scrupulous planning, dedication and long hours, but some business manager or application developer somewhere is always going to be unhappy with you when something breaks, data is lost or their app goes slow, and you’ll just have to take the blame for it when it happens.

This is a common occurrence in environments where everyone is under pressure to deliver to impossible deadlines, and even though the root cause of a problem is not always the database, the finger-pointing begins and you are the one who usually has to face the wrath!

Of course, the job of a DBA can also be very rewarding too with excellent salaries and lots of opportunities where you can make yourself look real good, praise is lavished upon you and that’s what keeps you going.

It’s also easy to fall into the trap that working hard is just what you need to do to get this done – but how about working smarter?

Have you often thought, what the heck does “working smarter” actually mean?

I found this really interesting article about what you can do to help “work smarter”, which can be applied to just about any job including that of a DBA. You see this sort of thing a lot with DBAs; they try to do everything, can’t say “NO”, afraid to delegate because they feel others can’t do the job as well as they can and then find their working time is dictated by the pace of other people’s demands.

One essential component to being able to work smarter as a DBA is having the right tools.

Let’s face it, your number one challenge as a DBA is trying to reduce the amount of “fire-fighting” you inevitably have to do when managing a production system.  

Look at the chart below which shows how production DBAs spend their time. Look familiar?

It must be very frustrating when you have a gazillion other things to do (such as improving your backup/recovery strategy, working closer with the development DBAs, improving your knowledge of the latest and greatest from Oracle, etc) to have to continually react the other “stuff” simply because you are the “go-to” person and therefore expected to fix things that break.

If you had good tools, that your less experienced production DBAs and your development DBAs could use effectively to fix problems and encourage the formulation of consistent methodologies and processes, you’d me more likely to delegate more duties to them, therefore freeing up more of your time to plan your strategies, learn stuff, etc.

I recently wrote a White Paper entitled “Simplify Database Administration” which examines just this problem. Administering a production Oracle database is hard, especially when the telephone is ringing off the hook and people are queuing at your desk to ask questions.

This next series of blogs looks at simplifying database administration using the DBA Module in Toad^® for Oracle and shows how much more is achievable than perhaps you first thought.

Toad for Oracle DBA Module helps maintain database health and stability. It ensures the best possible efficiency and performance while minimizing the impact of changes to your database environment.

The DBA Module not only automates administration and reporting tasks, but it also provides a workflow that allows you to easily transition from one task to another. The Toad for Oracle DBA Module facilitates database administration tasks with a powerful browser-based view of performance information across multiple database instances, right down to the user session level. This module also includes a built-in Oracle database administration knowledge base – Knowledge Xpert for Oracle Administration. With the Toad or Oracle DBA Module, administrators can quickly:

       Generate synchronization scripts, and compare and synchronize database schemas
Perform tablespace management and roll back segment maintenance
Schedule batch jobs and mine Redo Logs
Import or export Oracle operations and manage user sessions
Execute a 54-point health check to ensure the viability of your database instances 

1. http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/database/solutions/archives/a-dbas-new-year-resolutions-6043