Client: I need you to clean up the database and remove all rows [with children] with a timestamp older than 5 years

Team: OK

Team [internally]: we definitely need a dba for this
Me: dba? Why? A junior dev can do that
Team: yyeeaahh, but still.. A DBA would do it better. You know, foreign keys and everything

Me: ....

depends on "the database", of course any old school dev knows some basic SQL, but if it's Oracle SQL then I'd also prefer to pass the responsibility to specialists and focus on my own expertise instead

@usr--2ndry what's the difference? As far as delete goes, Ora is no different than postgres or mariadb

@netikras I'd rather call an ORM method instead of working on any database directly anyway. Oracle came into my mind for causing unexpected trouble when I thought I knew SQL in a project setup years ago ... turned out that I only knew mySQL and had never properly used foreign keys etc. before

I’m with @netikras on this one.

Databases are so easy I'm confused and feel perpetually underqualified to take a high responsibility position for them cuz I think there's gotta be some black magic I'm missing, eeeee

This is what pisses me off with devs.

Sure there are tasks where a DBA is required...

... But this is backup, delete, testing (that everything is correct / delete is complete), backup. Last backup just for history.

Best would be of course testing before execution in a separate isolated environment.

But thats not magic. Thats far from magic. Its basic knowledge.

Saying "we need a DBA" for this boils always down to 2 possible things:

1) someone else should do it.
2) i don't wanna be responsible.

Which is exactly the reason why it pisses me off.

Everyone gets paid to do their job.

So fucking do it.

@IntrusionCM oki

I just dunno how to optimize it if that becomes relevant but tbh otherwise it's just whatever

@jestdotty

Can understand. Can also unterstand why someone says "DBS are black magic" or someone doesn't want the responsibility.

(Especially with bad management....)

But as u said: In the end its a pretty mundane task, just fry the tuples from the database.

I'd unterstand if there was table or database modification involved (adding columns, renaming database, ...)...

But deleting data from a database?

Thats ... Trivia. Really.