A three month contract that lasted nearly two years. The database engineering team within CSFB is responsible for creating the standard database builds (Sybase, Oracle and MS SQL Server) for the bank, and creating and maintaining an internal toolset for DBAs to build, monitor and run day-to-day the database instances. Hardware included Sun, PC compatible and egenera blades. OSs included Solaris 5, 7 & 8, RedHat Advanced Server 3.0 and Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9.

Firstly a cost transparency project. Database replication within CSFB was recorded manually by DBAs when setting up systems, this needed to be automated to feed the upstream database used by the cost tranparency project. A trio of Perl scripts was created to run locally on all database systems to extract the replication information and feed a central database. MSSQL was monitored using SQL-DMO to dig into the SQL Server setup and extract the relavent information. Oracle and Sybase were monitored using SQL applied directly to the databases (and in Sybases case the replication server that controlled the replication).

A tool needed to be created on the DBAs intranet to allow the recording of decommissioned servers and their running environment to allow the re-commissioning of those servers should the need arise. This was accomplished using ASP, VBScript and Javascript in an IIS environment and SQL within a Sybase environment to record the data.

Also a tool was required to report to the cost transparency team if a given dataserver was considered a standard build or not given the framework of standards within CSFB. This was a stand-alone Perl running on Solaris script which interrogated the central Sybase database of server information and ascertained if the build was standard from a user-defined list of criteria.

Certified the DBA toolkit for Oracle 9i RAC on RedHat Advanced Server 3.0 and for Oracle 10g non-RAC on Solaris 8.

Created a Perl script to clone Oracle databases from Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) backups.

Specified and designed a Perl script to allow DBAs to create Oracle 10g databases according to internal CSFB standards.

Finally assisted the operational engineering team in the maintenance, support and updating of the internal DBA toolkit.