In a previous blog entry I referred to my job at Sybase University. While I was teaching new consultants about the Sybase culture and technology, I was learning about the difference in the mindset between the DBA and the Developer. What are those differences? “Chalk and Cheese” is a common expression. They look the same but they are very different animals.
The DBA consultants we would hire were all experienced, but that experience might have been with a previous release of Sybase SQL Server or maybe with Oracle or other database. Mostly they had a UNIX background. The consultants we hired as developers usually had experience with PowerBuilder or similar technology. Mostly they had a Windows background. Both the DBAs and Developers needed to know the latest technologies. They also needed to understand how the other half lived. This cross-pollination was important for team-building especially since these consultants would be sent as a team to customer sites together. A certain amount of empathy was needed in addition to a basic technical understanding of the “other side”. This would produce a cohesive and productive team – that was the theory.
The DBAs were clear in their methods: “Give me the keyboard and the command line and I’ll be fine. I don’t trust these Wizards and fancy tools because I don’t really know what they are doing to my system. Forget the mouse, don’t need it”. The Developers were also clear: “Give me the mouse, I can do everything point-and-click. If I have to use the keyboard, it must be a badly designed application”. My job was to get these folks to work together – good luck!
Well, I think we were successful. We set up a fictitious customer “Suds R Us”, a beer and wine distributor that wanted to scale up to SQL Server from a desktop database. We wanted a customer that would raise a smile (and a glass) across international boundaries. Sad but true. The project was to help the customer upgrade from the PowerBuilder V4/Watcom desktop application to a multi-server scalable PowerBuilder V5 /SQL Server System XI application running on Sun Solaris with Windows and Browser based clients. To celebrate the successful project completion, we would take the teams on a Boston Duck Tour and then to John Harvard’s Brewhouse. It was a formula, but it worked. The sad thing is, I never grew tired of running these programs every month…I wonder why?
Cheers
Brian
