Rachel,
 I agree with your short list of the areas of responsibilities but I
would change the word "application" to "development". An application
DBA, from the people I have talked to, is quite busy performing the
upgrades and patches that accompany the Oracle Applications. The
applications database generally has many, many tables, triggers and
constraints and is constantly the target for upgrades and patches from
Oracle. It is a time consuming task as the majority of the different
applications (financial, HR, Purchase Order, etc) have "hooks" into each
different package and are so intertwined that any small fix in one
involves patches for the others. There are only a few user defined
tables as each package has their own named tables that are partially
shared between packages. There is very little if any work you can do on
the application code because it is so intertwined and customized when it
is installed. Any upgrades require that the "customization" be reworked
to make it fit into the new version of the application package. 
 It takes a longer time to install than a standard database, on the
magnitude of days, and requires a dedicated and investigative mind set
to maintain.

To the list you created I would add:
Help desk call recipient,
network support,
client support,
software and hardware evaluation,
"whipping" post,
IT team member (possibly team leader),
self driven,
office coffee maker,
consumer of various liquids.

Ron
ROR m���m

>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/29/02 04:50PM >>>
that's not a bad definition :)

seriously, everyone will have their own definition, mine is:

production dba -- responsible for all databases that are considered
"production". this includes but is not limited to:

backups
recovery testing
contingency testing
production performance tuning (should mostly be database tuning as SQL
really should be tuned at the development stage, with information
passed back from the production DBA)
documentation of all procedures
space management on production systems, including capacity planning
and
projection of growth
change management
monitoring external data loads into production database
health checks on production database

application dba -- responsible for all databases in which developers
have  access. responsibilities:

SQL tuning (not SQL coding!)
database design, in conjunction with the developers
any and all changes to the application schema
working with the production DBA to ensure production performance (see
SQL tuning!)
backups (these might be weekly offline backups, as development is
usually less critical but then again maybe not)
as deadlines creep closer, the "weekends off" may not be 

this is just the "short" list

I've usually been both the production and application dba where I've
worked.

Rachel


--- Peter Barnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> We are having this debate.  What is a 'Production
> DBA'?  Right now all of the DBAs do some of
> everything.  In an effort to focus more DBA time on
> infrastructure, damagement is floating the idea of
> Production and Applications DBAs.  The DBA group has
> loosely translated this into the group that is always
> on-call and the group that gets their weekends off.
> 
> I would appreciate some input from those of you who
> are Production DBAs.  
> 
> 
> 
> =====
> Pete Barnett
> Lead Database Administrator
> The Regence Group
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> 
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