DBA personality Traits

I’m just about to interview 2 candidates for a Senior DBA vacancy. As part of the interview process 1) Technical Test 2) Interview (Technical, Experience & Personality) The purpose of the Technical Tests is not to determine their memory of commands. Although , being able to recall and use basic database server commands is important. I focus on discussions around the Internals and problem solving approach. For non-technical traits , I’m looking for high levels of the following personality traits for the DBA. Through the conversation I note examples of these traits Detail oriented Curiosity Tenacity Tactful\Politically astute Self-starter Self... Read more →

Database Tuning overview –Storage Tuning

Part of the Performance Tuning series – Performance Stack , this section looks at Storage Tuning. The purpose of the series is a general approach to Performance Tuning – independent of database server platform. A large proportion of DBAs support more than one type of database server and a methodology allows them to apply to all platforms. Storage Tuning is an important factor in database performance. IOPS and MB/sec throughput are essential to database performance. OLTP is characterised by more random reads, requiring efficient IOPS. Efficient IOPS means quick response. DSS requires good MB\sec with the focus on sequential and... Read more →

DB2 process model

There’s a good article on http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0807kharche/ outlining the DB2 9.5 process model. Key Points 1) New memory model 2) Increased automatic configurations . According to the article , less is required of the DBA. Based on my experience since DB2 9.5 – there’s some truth in this point. The focus is now more on architecture and DB2 performance tuning. Designing for scaling is a critcal part of designing the database server system 3) Process model is the same for : Linux,Unix and Windows 4) Context Switching between threads is quicker than process switching. Less resource is required . One process... Read more →