[Dbix-class] How I hate (some) DBAs

[Ian]

Dan Horne wrote:
> There's no real advice from a technical point-of-view. Your DBA is being a
> petty bureaucrat beacuse he can. It just makes him feel superior, but he's
> just an arrogant prat
> 
> Dan
> Ian said:
>> Hi
>> We are just coming to the end of our development with a (very) tight
>> timescale and pretty much on-time due to the use of DBIC and Catalyst.
>>
>> Development was on MySQL but someone has now decided we have to run on
>> Oracle. OK, no problem we thought, it should migrate over with very few
>> issues since we are using DBIC.
>>
>> However, the Oracle DBA has thrown his teddy out of the pram and refuses
>> to accept that DBIC can generate efficient code, or code that he can
>> inspect, and insists that we use an 'API' that he will show us how to
>> create to use pl/sql statements. From what I have seen of it, it will
>> take me back about 10 years to where I was trying to generate my own DB
>> abstraction layer before I learned about CDBI and DBIC. Argghh.
>>
>> I have pointed out to the project manager that this will break
>> everything we have written so far. We will have to manually write all
>> the code to do the heavy lifting and shifting that DBIC does for us so
>> easily. It is likely to take us at least twice as long as it has already
>> taken us to redevelop the whole application to write the new database
>> abstraction layer and modify our application to use it.
>>
>> Yes I can output the generated SQL from DBIC, but this does not satisfy
>> our DBA.
>>
>> How do other developers cope with these people? Are there any DBAs on
>> here that embrace DBIC that can give me any advice?
>>
>> Regards
>> Ian
>>
Thanks everyone for your advice (or at least your support).

I have documented my objection to the approach giving what I think are 
realistic estimates on how much extra work it will take us to change 
(twice the time it has taken us to develop the app in the first place). 
I have also documented my technical objections that it will be less 
flexible to change, more difficult to test and support etc.

I think it has struck home (or at least made it clear that we can't do 
this in the timescales allowed) and now there is a possible move towards 
SQL Server but keeping DBIC.

So I think a reasonable outcome.

Thanks
Ian