Accidentally nuked production database

[centurian]

I don't believe this story either.

There is no way that a junior dev on their first day can nuke a production database.

And if they could, the dev wouldn't be fired - someone more senior would for making it possible.

[vetran]

I'm fairly confident this tale of woe didn't happen. It's a typical troll post.

Don't call Bobspud a Troll.

[NickFitz]

Lots of Devs have excellent knowledge of databases and are perfectly capable of maintaining a database. It's nothing special that can't be learnt.

But in this case it was a new hire, fresh out of college. Definitely management's fault.

Apart from anything else, what kind of idiot puts the production DB administrator password in a document which is handed out to new hires?

[NickFitz]

I'm fairly confident this tale of woe happens quite often. It's a typical Silicon Valley startup run by people who think getting a good grade from Stanford makes them competent to operate a business.

FTFY

[bobspud]

I'm only messin - I recognise the need for processes, I just don't like the distinction between DBA's and Devs. I think a developer needs to have an excellent and practical understanding of databases.

I don't know about where you work but the major issue I have seen around letting Dev's be DBA is that the ancient and mystic trade of schema design and normalisation seems to go straight out the window. If you screw up a DB schema and then compound it with bad table placement on the disks there is absolutely nothing you can do to recover the lost wasted space and application performance.

We had Mongo come to see us at one of my previous clients and one of the things they wanted us to do was create DB shards on three volumes on a raid 10 SAN.

[MrMarkyMark]

I don't know about where you work but the major issue I have seen around letting Dev's be DBA is that the ancient and mystic trade of schema design and normalisation seems to go straight out the window. If you screw up a DB schema and then compound it with bad table placement on the disks there is absolutely nothing you can do to recover the lost wasted space and application performance.

We had Mongo come to see us at one of my previous clients and one of the things they wanted us to do was create DB shards on three volumes on a raid 10 SAN.

Or, back in the day, you buy a very expensive Netezza box for your DW.

Lovely machine at the time.

You then decide you can just dump all sorts of tulipe code on it, against others and my advice.
No dimensional schema modelling required.
'cos its quick, right?

Literally became like a Ferrari dragging a caravan after 6 months.

[GJABS]

ooooohhh you dba's get so protective, god help you if a clever dev ends up doing a bit of database work and your plate juggling is found out.

I'm sure you're right - in some ways the DBA is the "drummer" of the IT world. As in a bit thick and lacking in imagination.
But as gatekeepers, they can be excellent.

[GJABS]

Literally became like a Ferrari dragging a caravan after 6 months.

Which is not necessarily that slow

Edit: Above link doesn't work properly. Click this instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5GivB7LHXo

[MrMarkyMark]

Which is not necessarily that slow

[BigRed]

DBAs are the custodians of the data, Devs are the chaos monkeys that need to be tamed.