Re: Curious Graduating Student

Well, mechanics first. You can run a lot of Oracle on a PC, the personal version is, what, about $500 list? Better yet, you can get the free demo disk, which is supposed to time out, but is good for a while.

As a title, "DBA" means so many different things to different people. Sometimes it means you're the person who changes the tapes once a day. Sometimes it means you're expert at the mechanics of the particular database product, but have no idea what ought to be done. Sometimes it means you know what ought to be done, too. It may or may not include data modelling. It usually stops short of knowing how to write code that intelligently utilizes the database.

You could probably find a junior DBA job somewhere, but probably it's not a great initial career path for someone with a C/S degree. IMHO.

Joshua Stern
JRStern_at_primalsys.com

On Sat, 11 Apr 1998 19:11:48 -0400, "James Naftel" <naftel_at_negia.net> wrote:
> I am graduating w/ a CS degree in a couple of months. I'm not real sure
>what direction to head, since the computer industry is so large. In my
>degree databases haven't really been stressed. In fact my first database
>class is this quarter. I have worked w/database platforms for about 2
>years(mainly Visual FoxPro(don't laugh)) at a small consulting firm. I
>enjoy the designing phase the most. I'm just curious about what
>responsibilites a DBA might have, or what other areas people find
>interesting? Also, most database jobs seem to require prior experience on
>that platform. Oracle would be the platform of choice for me, but it's hard
>to get much experience w/ oracle, since I can't really afford a UNIX server
>and an oracle license(at least my wife says i can't). Can anyone make any
>suggestion on getting a foot in the door(what type of job would one start
>out doing)? Any other ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>
>
>Thanks for your time.
>
>James Naftel
>naftel_at_negia.net
>
>
>
Received on Thu Apr 16 1998 - 18:26:45 CDT