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Message Posted: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 @ 17:32:12 GMT

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We studied the roles & responsibilities of our data management people some years ago, and found that there were differences in the support structure between Teradata and pretty much everything else.

Non-Teradata shops (Oracle, DB2) tended to use a three tier support model, with overlapping roles, consisting of Systems Analyst, Database Administrator and Data Analyst. The SA is responsible for allocating resources from the host system to the database instance and tuning system parameters for the instance. The DBA is responsible for allocation of resources within the instance, table & index creation, backups and maintenance (like reorgs). The DA is responsible for view creation, SQL generation and end-user interface.

Teradata shops tended to use a two tier support model, again with overlapping roles, consisting of Systems Analyst and Database Administrator. The SA is responsible for all resource allocation, high level database creation, backups and whatever maintenance activities need to take place (checktable). The DBA has complete control of the architecture of the application (tables, indexes, views, SQL), space allocation within the application and end-user interface. Compared to the three tier model, the DBAs have absorbed the DA roles, and then handed off the resource management functions to the SAs.

Which model is better? Well, I guess it depends on the relative workloads, staff funding and the structure of user organization being supported.

YMMV.

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