As Published In March/April 2006

Tools Make the Man
By Blair Campbell

Oracle helps peers do good work in schools, with SQL, and in the skies.

Kent Graziano

Peer Specs Company: Denver Public Schools Job Title/Description: Manager, enterprise data integration, serving as chief architect for the district's "information factory" Location: Denver, Colorado Length of Time Using Oracle Products: 17 years Books Published: The Data Model Resource Book (John Wiley and Sons, 1995) and Oracle Designer (Prentice Hall PTR, 2000) Oracle Ace

If you could add a feature to Oracle Database, what would it be? I'd add a GUI interface to Oracle Enterprise Manager to make it easier to define table partitions and assign them to tablespaces.

What technology has most changed your life? Oracle Designer. I love the ability to do a business model, transform it to a physical database design, and then generate the code to build the database. The ability to automatically generate a table-level application-programming interface, complete with RI [Referential Integrity] and business-rules enforcement, is unsurpassed. It's been a lifesaver recently in providing databases that are front-ended with .NET applications—and it's allowed us to be very agile in our development.

What's your favorite thing to do that doesn't involve work? Watching sci-fi movies and practicing martial arts. I'm a fifth-degree black belt and master instructor in traditional Tae Kwon Do.

Shyam Prabhudesai

What advice do you have about how to get into Web and database development? Poorly written SQL is the root cause of many database performance problems. DBAs should write their stored procedures for monitoring and performance tuning, instead of running the same scripts over and over again. To enhance PL/SQL, look to Oracle Press books and Oracle documentation, and for Web skills, focus on on-the-job experience and interacting with other Web developers.

Peer Specs Company: JPMorgan Chase, a leading global financial services firm Job Title/Description: Team lead, responsible for day-to-day monitoring of mission-critical Oracle Real Application Clusters, implementing disaster recovery using Oracle's standby configuration, and performance tuning using Statspack Location: Mumbai, India Oracle Credentials: Oracle-certified DBA (Oracle8i, Oracle9i) with nearly five years of experience using Oracle products

How do you use wireless technologies on the job at JPMorgan Chase? We use Peregrine's ticket logging system, which sends short message service alerts on mobile devices for Severity 1 tickets. I also use a GPRS [General Packet Radio Service] feature—both to surf the internet and for MMS [multimedia messaging service] messages. I really value WAP [Wireless Application Protocol] technology—and I can picture the day when DBAs get the Oracle Enterprise Manager console on their mobile phones and PDAs.

Beyond wireless, what's your favorite tool or technique on the job? Statspack. It's the best tool for gathering databasewide statistics and identifying performance bottlenecks.

Amar Kumar Padhi
How did you get started in IT? When I was younger, my father enrolled me in a summer course where I learned DOS, BASIC programming, and how to play a lot of games. It was then that I developed an interest in technology and decided to make a profession out of it.

Peer Specs Company: Mercator, a manufacturer of airline and airport management systems Job Title/Description: Oracle Database and Web server administrator, responsible for implementing and maintaining an airline accounting system designed using Oracle technologies Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates Oracle Credentials: Oracle-certified DBA (Oracle8) and internet application developer (Oracle Forms and Reports 6i) with 11 years of experience using Oracle products

In 2003 you wrote a seven-part series of articles called "Oracle Optimizer" on www.dbasupport.com. Tell us more about it. When Oracle made it mandatory to be on a cost-based optimizer [CBO] engine starting with Oracle Database 10g, I realized that a lot of setups would have to move from the traditional rule-based optimizer. I did analysis of various setups, including how Oracle E-Business Suite 11i behaves on CBO. The series gave insight into what needs to be looked at when making the big optimizer move.

In your current job, how does the airline accounting system you work with rely on Oracle technology? The software, called RAPID, is an airline revenue accounting system that's been developed and maintained for more than 10 years now. Our most-recent release is now on Oracle Application Server 10g. Because of the growth involved in the system, our role involves constant performance tuning and evaluating new Oracle features to improve on the existing design.