The newly released Oracle Database 10g Release 2 offers enhanced automated features designed to ease the burden of statistics collection and analysis.

Automation is the key mantra with 10g release. In the words of Mark Townsend, Oracle's Senior Director of Database Product Management, "wherever we could, if it was a housekeeping task, we would automate it".

The system named ADAM stands for automated diagnostics and monitoring. It keeps 7 days worth of data which it uses for analysis and making predictions.

The database itself knows what data has been added. It knows from the queries that it's executing at the time it will automatically collect the right statistics that it needs. The database is completely instrumented. You can anytime find out about the users connected, executing SQL statements, memory usage, I/O, paging etc.

In response to the changing role of DBA, Mr. Townsend said "They'll be changing almost away from mechanics to becoming race car drivers. They're going to allow the business to actually use the information that they've been collecting for 10 or 15 years."

In other words firefighting days of an Oracle DBA may be soon coming to an end. Will their jobs be at stake too? I don't think so. The demand far exceeds supply.

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