Kellyn Pot’vin-Gorman notes that the “Gone will be the DBA” trend has hit Oracle as well:
Any DBA who specializes in optimization knows that hardware offers around 15% overall opportunity for improvement. My favorite quote from Cary Millsap, “You can’t hardware your way out of a software problem” is quite fitting, too. A hardware upgrade can offer a quick increase in performance, only to find that the problem seemingly returns after a period of time. As we’ve discussed in previous posts. The natural life of a database is growth- growth in data, growth in processing, growth in users. This growth requires more resources and if the environment is not performing as optimally and efficiently as possible, more resources will always be required.
Someday I will write my “No, the DBA isn’t going anywhere” opus, but today is not that day. Anyhow, this is a good post for anyone worried that automation will kill the DBA.