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Database Administration
No DORG awards here. The database administration function is the most politically sensitive function for each of the large corporations I visited. I've seen the database administration group in three different areas of the organization:
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Applications development (see Figure 3)
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Infrastructure group (see Figure 4)
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Mixture of both (see Figure 5)
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Figure 3 Applications development.
Figure 4 Infrastructure group.
Figure 5 Mixture of both.
It's a tough call, but let's look back to our roots. In the mainframe world, this function is centralized under the infrastructure group, with the following intentions:
Pooling resources
Designing enterprise-wide database administration solutions
Enhancing career/skills development
Designing and developing the architecture
Addressing performance and tuning issues
I recommend centralizing database administration under the infrastructure group. You might argue that this group's focus should be on designing the proper database, and it wouldn't be designed properly under the infrastructure group. But I don't think that's realistic. Isn't the DBA function a service function, just like any other function within IT? In the mainframe world, the database group was centralized under the infrastructure group, and things worked out just fine in most cases. Smart database designers want it perfect from the beginning, so there will be fewer heartaches to deal with after it's in production.