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I had an issue that I needed a DBA's help with. I went to my go-to DBA (DBA#1), since he's usually been friendly and receptive to my questions. He gave me his recommendation, and I logged a ticket for the DBAs to pick up. Unfortunately, a different DBA picked up the ticket, and he told me we should handle the issue a different way that would be faster (1 hour instead of 6-7 hours) but should be equivalent to doing the same thing. This DBA (DBA#2) is usually considered knowledgeable, so I went ahead and agreed.

Turns out, DBA#2's solution did not fix the problem. I asked DBA#1 about it, and he got irritated and accused me of trying to cut corners to save time. To him, it looks like I just asked DBA#2 to do it a faster way and ignored DBA#1's advice.

In a situation like this, is it better to try to explain what happened to DBA#1 to try to maintain the good relationship I thought we had, or should I just leave it alone?

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  • Have you attempted to have a 3 person meeting between you, DBA 1 and 2? If not, I recommend that you set up a quick 30 min phone/face to face meeting to discuss the issue and solution as to make sure you are all on the same page. – Isaiah3015 Jul 16 '18 at 16:08
  • How was the solution proposed? Through the ticket, email, or in person/phoncon? What I'm trying to see is if DBA1 could have seen the proposed solution of DBA2? – Dan Jul 16 '18 at 16:09
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In a situation like this, is it better to try to explain what happened to DBA#1 to try to maintain the good relationship I thought we had, or should I just leave it alone?

I don't think that your relationship with DBA1 was harmed. This was a job-related situation and it should not be taken personally.

I take it you are not a DBA nor in a position to have known if DBA2's suggestion was sound, thus why you rely on the suggestions of those coworkers who are. You took an advice, which proved ineffective, and "wasted" one single hour. Now you know that you have to proceed with the longer solution; no need to make it a big deal.

Perhaps DBA1 was not in his best mood that day, and was a bit upset by having wasted 1 hour (which, to be honest, was not his and is not a huge amount of time). It seems that he over-reacted to some degree with this situation.

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No need to explain anything. Your job is not to pick favorites or select a DBA solution. That is their job, and if one of them screwed up, you don't owe anyone an explanation. You didnt cut corners and you didn't hold a gun to anyone's head and make them deploy a bad change.

Draft an email to the two of them and say something along the lines of:

Hey DBA team. As you know, the fix for ticket #123 did not work as expected. I spoke with DBA#1 and he/she had another idea that might be the solution we need. Can you two discuss this option and let me know if it will work so we can get it into production ASAP?

This shows that you entered a ticket, DBA#2 picked it up, and botched the solution. Let them figure it out from there. In the future, put a specific person's name in the ticket and say that you already discussed the issue with them and to please route the ticket to them for implementation.

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