There are times when you as a DBA wished you were involved before someone designed a data model. After release to production correcting mistakes is usually complicated and with risks.

Any database that has gone into production is a legacy database according to Tom Kyte. I agree, but to me some databases give me associations to legacy more often than others. In a post at the OraStory blog Dom complains about companies that hire contractors for a maximum of one year, and due to the fact that it takes half a year to understand the business and the data, you hardly get to show what you can deliver.