I visit and talk to many DBAs and DBA groups throughout the course of each year, and I also communicate to a lot of folks via e-mail. Some are simply comments on my articles and books, but many more ask questions and solicit advice. I welcome this input from readers, and every-now-and-then I will take the opportunity to answer particularly intriguing questions in print. A common question I am asked is “What is a good way to manage how effective your DBA group is?”

This is not a very easy question to answer because a DBA has to be a “jack of all trades.” And each of these “trades” can have multiple metrics for measuring success. For example, a metric suggested by one reader was to measure the number of SQL statements that are processed successfully. But what does “successfully” mean? Does it mean simply that the statement returned the correct results, or does it mean it returned the correct results in a reasonable time? And what is a “reasonable” time? Two seconds? One minute? A half hour? Unless you have established service level agreements it is unfair to measure the DBA on response time. And the DBA must participate in establishing reasonable SLAs (in terms of cost and response time) lest he be handed a task that cannot be achieved.

Any fair DBA evaluation metric must be developed with an understanding of the environment in which the DBA works. This requires in-depth analysis of things like:

• number of applications that must be supported,
• number of databases and size of those databases,
• number of database servers,
• use of the databases (OLTP, OLAP, web-enabled, data mining, ad hoc, etc.),
• number of different DBMSs (that is, Oracle, DB2, Informix, etc.),
• number of OS platforms to be supported (Windows 2000, UNIX, OS/390, AS/400, etc.),
• special consideration for ERP applications due to their non-standard DBMS usage,
• number of users and number of concurrent users,
• type of Service Level Agreements in effect or planned,
• availability required (24/7 or something less),
• the impact of database downtime on the business ($$$),
• performance requirements (subsecond or longer - gets back to the SLA issue),
• type of applications (mission critical vs. non-mission critical),
• frequency of change requests.

This is probably an incomplete list, but it accurately represents the complexity and challenges faced by DBAs on a daily basis.

Of course, the best way to measure DBA effectiveness is to judge the quality of all the tasks that they perform. But many aspects of such measurement will be subjective. Keep in mind that a DBA performs many tasks to ensure that the organization’s data and databases are useful, useable, available, and correct. These tasks include data modeling, logical and physical database design, database change management, performance monitoring and tuning, assuring availability, authorizing security, backup and recovery, ensuring data integrity, and, really, anything that interfaces with the company’s databases. Developing a consistent metric for measuring these tasks in a non-subjective way is challenging.

You'll probably need to come up with a complex formula of all of the above — and more — to do the job correctly. Which is probably why I've never seen a fair, non-subjective, metric-based measurement program put together for DBAs. If you (or anyone else reading this) implements such a program I'd love to hear the details of the program — and how it is accepted by the DBA group.

--

Craig Mullins is an independent consultant and president of Mullins Consulting, Inc. Craig has extensive experience in the field of database management having worked as an application developer, a DBA, and an instructor with multiple database management systems including DB2, Sybase, and SQL Server. Craig is also the author of the DB2 Developer’s Guide, the industry-leading book on DB2 for z/OS, and Database Administration: Practices and Procedures, the industry’s only book on heterogeneous DBA procedures. You can contact Craig via his web site at http://www.craigsmullins.com.