Re: Learning oracle question

Karl's assessment seems very on-target to me. It can be difficult and more than a bit daunting when you're trying to break into the Oracle field, but once you're in, there's great demand. It seems like for junior positions, most employers want at least 2 years of experience with Oracle, but how do you break in in the first place to get the 2 years? Catch-22.

If you're considering a choice in career paths between database stuff and network stuff, you should ask yourself the question: which do you enjoy more? It seems to me that both paths demand that you enjoy solving problems, or at least can live with solving problems 40+ hours a week. (If you absolutely *hate* solving technical problems, you really want to think about doing something else for a living...) To be honest, when I was pursuing my bachelor's degree in computer science, I spent the first three years of it wondering why the heck I was doing it--all the programming was in C++, and I really didn't enjoy it at all. It wasn't until I started studying relational databases that I discovered an area of computer science that I really loved and enjoyed.

All of this is rather a roundabout way of saying: if you enjoyed in your studies the network stuff more than the database stuff, go for the network certification. If you enjoyed the database stuff more, follow Karl's advice.

Two cents poorer,
bob
Lowly Oracle Apps programmer ;)

Karl Hewlett wrote:
> Learn SQL, practice SQL, live SQL, breathe SQL ....
>
> Try for a job in, for example, a marketing dept using your MBA and Oracle
> skills to, for example, query a database of customers to create direct
> marketing lists. While doing this read the Oracle docos, Oracle books, etc.
>
> Consider Oracle Certified Profession - it shows comittment if nothing else.
> Of course the sting here is the OCP course is very difficult to do as theory
> only - it is intended for practicing database people.
>
> I have been through a similar path. In my experience the first couple of
> years of saying I wished to be an Oracle DBA was greeted with sceptisism and
> brush-offs. Quite recently the situation changed considerably and I now
> have employment consultants approaching me. As Oracle is a complicated
> beast to come to terms with first off this sort of makes sense. Even though
> it does of course make it very hard to break into the industry.
>
> As an aside I believe all software tools display one of 2 traits / require
> one of 2 learning curves. They either start out simple for a simple task
> and become _very_ complicated for a complicated task (e.g. Access) or start
> out complicated and never get any more so (e.g. Oracle) . This means with
> something like Oracle the steepest part of the learning curve is the first
> part. Once you are over that hump expect to contiue reading the docos,
> encountering problems, etc but it gets much easier.
>
> Someone <someonehereNOSPAMJAM_at_mac.com> wrote in message
> news:someonehereNOSPAMJAM-54CFB9.15252114042000_at_news.mw.mediaone.net...
> > I took one of these oracle classes a while back.
> > It covered Oracle Developer, Designer, SQL, touched on VB and Unix.
> > Obviously it was a brief overview of the area of oracle.
> > I was misguided to believe it would help me get a career in the field
>
> <snip>
>
> > So now that I have this slight background on oracle, what would help me
> > getting a job?
>
> <snip>
Received on Sat Apr 15 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT