My 2ps worth
Started out as an office administrator (so non-technical it wasn't true !!).
There was an opening for a trainee Cobol programmer on ICL VME (no
experience necessary as training would be provided - just right attitude and
willingness to learn), so I put my hat in the ring. Bingo I was in.
6 weeks Cobol training later and I was on my first Live Project. I seemed to
show quite an aptitude for this line of work and 18 months later there was
an opportunity to get involved in Ingres 4GL/Unix and C development within
the same organisation. Thanks to the good written references from my
manager, I got that post. It was in this job that I started a very steep
learning curve that eventually led to my job today as a DBA. I was placed on
a team with a bunch of external consultants and very rapidly (after a few
courses as well) became fairly good at UNIX and 4GL, learning about the
admin side of UNIX along the way. I stayed as a developer for some time and
started picking up various DBA skills as well (on Ingres). After 2 years
doing this I applied for a Jumior UNIX Sys Admin job and got that as well.
When I started that I realised that it was more of a UNIX SA/DBA type role
so I continued on with my DBA skills. This lasted 6 months, I then moved
onto another company as a technical consultant, helping a software house to
port their product from a mainframe solution onto Ingres. They were also
using Oracle and Sybase. Sybase was quickly shelved and I could see that
Ingres was going the same way, so I started staying back after hours for a
couple of hours every night to "teach myself Oracle". After a while an
opening came up in their DBA group. This fell in nicely with the end of the
Ingres project so I went for it and got it. A few more courses later (Oracle
specific) and I started working as an Oracle DBA. I have since also worked
as an Informix DBA (joint role while also doing Oracle) but left that behind
after a couple of years. In total, been doing the Oracle thing for about 4-5
years for various companies now and I am still on the tip of the Iceberg in
terms of experience, as far as I can see.
I am not Oracle certified but I believe this will happen in the next 12
months.
I thank you
Lee
-----Original Message-----
Sent: 29 March 2001 19:00
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
doing
I started out as a Pro*C developer and helped out our help desk on
rotation when our product was released. This was the help desk that fielded
all the questions that the administrators out at all the sites needed help
finding answers to...kinda like this list (well except that I couldn't pick
and choose which questions I would answer). :) Anyways, since I did such
a wonderful job helping the admins get their problems resolved, they asked
me to help our DBA team out by developing utilities to ease the burden of
managing and propagating changes to the 1250 Oracle v6 instances we had.
Then one day the boss of a friend of mine (who I had been helping with some
Oracle problems he had run into) called and asked if I would be interested
in helping with their current project of migrating mainframe apps to
Oracle...and after all the hassle of getting me over to his organization, I
became the primary DBA and Developer2000 person.
As for becoming a DBA and easing the transition, one way is to become
friendly with any DBAs you know (preferably where you work at or at least
nearby)...show interest in what they do and see if they'll show you stuff.
Ask them if you can sit in when they do a reorg late at night or over the
weekend (well, if you can't sacrifice your salary, then you generally have
to give up some time). Don't ask too many questions or get in the
way...just watch and take notes (and then try it on your own on a test box
somewhere which will answer most of the questions anyways, but if you still
have questions, you can ask them about it now and get better responses
because there isn't any crunch-time pressure involved). Network and chat
with DBAs all around about Oracle stuff and when they go to hire a new DBA
you just might have a chance that they remember you and might give you a
call to see if you're interested. Despite appearances sometimes, we're
mostly a friendly lot. :)
Jeffery Stevenson
Chief Database Geek
Medical Present Value, Inc.
Austin, TX
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 10:31 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
it?
OK, now I have to ask a question. How did you(general) break into the DBA
business? I'm not currently a DBA, I've installed a few development
instances with the help of the NT dbassitant, tried looking for work as a
DBA a couple of years ago, then realized how much I didn't know and in many
ways was glad I didn't get a job as a DBA. Now, I'm playing 8.1.5 on
Solaris, but really, I'm not cutting my salary in half in order to break
into the systems side of the house, so how does a person move from
development to systems without going broke in the process?
PS - I have some ideas, but I'm curious about your ideas.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 11:11 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Cherie,
OK, point well taken, so "silver bullet" would translate into "the one
item
that will succeed when no other does", "magic formula".
And, no he never did say he had an OCP, but he did say he was taking a
"course"
to get his OCP. To me having an OCP certificate without any experience is
totally meaningless. All it tells me is that you can memorize information
and
take a test. It does not tell me that you'll hold up in a crisis or that
you
really understand the consequences of your actions. That experience speaks
volumes more. Now someone with a number of years experience AND an OCP
certificate is a different matter altogether. Consequently my question, are
new
people looking at the OCP as the gateway into a position that they could not
otherwise get?
BTW: I'm not trying to either criticize or "brow beat" Xing. If that
impression
has been left, then I apologize. He asked a question, similar ones I field
in
house each day, and he was given an answer that is similar to the ones I
hand
out to my developers although I'd have given him the page number too and a
whole
lot less trash than Xing has gotten from this list. In my mind that is
sufficient to the purpose. Now if that creates additional questions, a much
longer dissertation on the results is in order.
Dick Goulet
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 3/29/2001 6:35 AM
Dick/Lee/Joe,
I'm not trying to defend him but unless I have not yet recieved
a post in my mail, Xing never said he had an OCP. Plus, Lee,
I think you may need to define "silver bullet". It probably doesn't
translate for people who don't use English as a second language.
Cherie Machler
Gelco Information Network
(really too busy this morning migrating a database to be sticking my nose
where it doesn't belong)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]@fatcity.com on 03/29/2001 08:00:45 AM
Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
cc:
Lee & Joe,
While I do agree that is possible one should try to figure these things
out,
and this really is a simple one, there does come a time when asking for
help is
appropriate. In this case Lee's answer is very much so. As far as taking
an
OCP course, that does torque my jaws. Over the last two years we must have
had
10 people looking for a job who's only mention of Oracle on their resume is
that
they have their OCP certificate. Needless to say, not a one of them has
been
invited in for an interview. I'll ask the question that's been bugging me
for
some time, Xing, do you think this is some kind of "silver bullet" to
getting a
job?
Dick Goulet
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: "Joseph S. Testa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 3/29/2001 4:05 AM
Lee, i'm with you 200%,
oh and for the original addressee(and others) if you can't figure out
what the heck that simple pl/sql block is doing(or where to figure it
out), then quit diluting the OCP worthiness, people who study just to
take the OCP and have no experience just go to further the waste of
paper that the certificate is printed on. :)
joe
lerobe - Lee Robertson wrote:
>
> Xing,
>
> Have a look at the documentation, specifically, Application Developers
> Guide, section dealing with "Using Procedures and Packages".
>
> No disrespect intended but sometimes, certainly for questions such as
this,
> you will learn a heck of a lot more by digging around in the docs, and
> reading (and working out) the answer for yourself. That is certainly my
> experience. You will also fell encouraged to delve further and learn more
> about other packages etc. Hope my pointer will help you.
>
> To the rest of you - I know it would have been quicker to write down the
> answer to Xings question, but what will he have learned about the general
> syntax ??
>
> Regards
>
> Lee
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: 29 March 2001 07:05
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
> Hi DBAs and SAs,
>
> Can someone tell me what is this ORACLE PL/SQL Script all about,..
> Ya... I know I have to read alot, my OCP course will start next month.
>
> BEGIN
> dbms_utility.analyze_schema ( '&OWNER', 'ESTIMATE', NULL, 5 ) ;
> END ;
> /
>
> Thank you
>
> Xing
>
--
Joe Testa http://www.oracle-dba.com
Performing Remote DBA Services, need some backup DBA support?
For Sale: Oracle-dba.com domain, its not going cheap but feel free to
ask :)
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