Fried foods, heck yeah! But what about fried databases?

Ah, the State Fair of Texas has come and gone!  We’re famous in the south for our fried foods, and the tradition is alive and well at the Fair.

A few fried foods I’ve either seen or read about at the Fair over the years:

Fried margarita
Fried spinach dip
Fried butter
Fried Nutella
Fried shrimp and grits
Fried bubble gum

In the spirit of this tradition, let’s pause to consider what sort of frying we could engage in as database administrators:

Fry the network – About that fancy Infiband switch that is just taking up space behind your RAC cluster … that switch you got at the electronics store bargain table is just as good, right?  Give it a try!

Fry the SAN – Drop a few indexes, preferably on large tables.  Who needs ’em anyway?

Fry the SGA – Stop using and/or forcing bind variables, preferably on a large, complex, highly repetitive set of OLTP SQL with a wide range of variable values.  Who needs binding?

Get fried by a security audit – Be sure to set the SYSTEM password to manager and SYS to change_on_install.  No one will ever guess your little scheme!

Fry some political capital – Decide on your own what the database recovery point and recovery time objectives are for your organization.  Who needs input from the business unit?

Fry your yearly bonus – Repeatedly put off recovery testing.  What possibly could go wrong?

Fry your boss’s nerves–- Any of the above should suffice.

Fry your nerves – Keep putting off that vacation.  How will it ever fit into that hectic project schedule anyway?

Fry your vacation – Once you finally manage to take a vacation, keep checking your email.  Check at least twice an hour, more often if you’re at a swanky restaurant with your spouse.  Spouses really dig that.

Fry your sanity – Wait, you’re a DBA.  That was gone long ago!