This blog contains experience gained over the years of implementing (and de-implementing) large scale IT applications/software.

Tag: Code Standards

Use of Oracle AWR / ASH leading to bad coding?

I had a brief email exchange with another Oracle guru the other day.
He suggested that the quality of Oracle coding in PL*SQL and Plain Jane (www.medicaltextbooksrevealed.com/blog/2010/02/plain-jane/) SQL had gone down hill.

This could be attributed to two factors:
1, The level of coding experience has dropped.  Older more experienced coders have filled into the new architect roles and the void is being filled quickly by newer in-experienced coders.
2, The rigour with which debugging, testing and tuning is performed has become somewhat lax (www.thefreedictionary.com/lax ) because there’s just no emphasis on the developers to tune their code when the DBA has such great tools to do it for them.

Is it possible that the use of the additionally licensed tools such as AWR (Automatic Workload Repository) and ASH (Active Session History) introduced in Oracle 10g, have provided an easy mechanism for DBAs to seek out better performance.
I don’t think these tools are just for DBAs, but the way they are marketed makes me feel they are pushed that way.