Okay, now that you know the major responsibilities as a DBA, when should you ask for help? When would you know something is wrong? One issue that every DBA dreads is when end users complain that the database is slow. It doesn't matter if you are sitting in your office and the database seems to be running perfectly well. Every script you run reveals no issues or distinguishable slowness. So what are those end users talking about? If the end users have an issue, then you now have a problem. And that particular problem is called response time; this subject will be explored further in Chapter 8.
Components (at several levels of the technology stack) that slow things down for the database can include the network, operating system, application servers, and of course hardware-specific problems. Start an SQL trace to help come up with an error message that will give more clues to the problem. Please don't assume it is someone else's problem.
If you encounter corruption...
