I’ll never forget the best DBA I ever appointed, because he thoughtfully taught me an effective technique for removing wheel-clamps from cars. It was after the interview, I seem to remember. We walked together to his car to get a file. There in the boot was some interesting equipment collected together to meet the needs of the urban DBA. He described the technique. I worried slightly over certain aspects. ‘Is this legal?’ He looked at me pityingly, and gave me a stirring speech about our duty to fight oppressive legislation, including the line, quoted from the Magna Carta;

‘No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals, or by the law of the and.’

Hmm. He’ll go far. I thought. I was right, too; He proved to have an unparalleled zeal for mastering corporate regulations and compliance issues.

The other DBA who proved to be the master of any crisis was once a specially trained riot policeman.  Bill changed career when the police force ‘went soft’. His highly trained skills of subduing rioters were no longer prized, and a future as a desk-bound social worker didn’t appeal. A career as a DBA beckoned.

Bill commanded instant respect amongst the developers. He never had to do any more than give ‘That Look’. This is because he was an instructor in martial arts and a champion weightlifter. He could lift the heaviest server in and out of the racks without effort or assistance. All the recalcitrant servers were soon pacified with the ease with which he once subdued over-excited Trotskyites

Once, whilst chatting in the server room, he showed me a grip which could restrain anyone so effectively that even talking, let alone struggling, was impossible.

One dreams wistfully of using this real-life Vulcan Nerve-Grip.

Phil: I gather that the development team has issues over the interface between the database and application layer?

Developer: Well, yes. I believe strongly that we should be using Hibernate, and should have table-level access to the databases so we can ‘persist’ our objects in the ‘data repository’. We can spray un-optimized dynamic SQL  all over the database without any clear idea about what is actually being generated and can Nnnngggh!… (thud)

Phil (wiping his hands) Any other clever ideas?

I’ve never had to put either technique to the test.  For the exceptional DBAs, the important skill is to plan for every conceivable problem and have a strategy in place to deal with it, even if the strategy involves crowbars and martial arts. For some reason, preparedness for an event makes it less likely to happen.