RE: How to break into DBA/Systems work without going broke doing

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: Cherie_Machler_at_gelco.com
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)

dgoulet_at_vicr.com_at_fatcity.com on 03/29/2001 08:00:45 AM

Please respond to ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com

Sent by: root_at_fatcity.com

To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> 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" <teci_at_oracle-dba.com>
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
>

--
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