Re: Can I call myself an Oracle DBA??!

If you are "the man who looks after the Oracle systems", then you are the DBA, and you certainly could call yourself that. But be careful when you leap to another job that you are cognizant of how the new environment compares to your current environment. For example, if do cold backups in your current environment, but are moving to a 7x24 shop, then you should study up on archiving and all that goes along with it. Your ability to quickly resolve performance problems may be more critical in an environment where your database grows and changes quickly, as opposed to a more stable situation.

Don't be too intimidated by database size. The big ones start and stop the same way as the small ones<g>. On the other hand, be aware that size can sometimes exacerbate problems. If I make a mistake in the placement of a 2 gig table, it takes longer to fix than if the table was only 2 meg.

To put all my advice into two sentences:

Look for a new position that is somewhat more "intense" than your current position, but don't oversell yourself.

Look into Oracle certification. That at least establishes that you have a baseline of knowledge.

Oh, one last thing. A healthy degree of skepticism about what you can do is a good thing. I once had a two sys admins push me pretty hard to move a new database onto raw devices. I resisted because at the time I had no experience w/db files on raw devices, and the schedule was very time critical. Better not to experiment on the new production system<g>. I'd rather work with a DBA who would approach a new task cautiously than one who would just blunder into it.

Hope this helps,

Jonathan

On Sun, 16 Apr 2000 20:37:46 +0100, Sid
<sid.james_at_virgin.net> wrote:

>I've been working at a college for several years and for the last two of
>those as "the man who looks after our Oracle systems". There are 5 DBs,
>none of which have needed much tuning (that's something I'm only now
>having to do). They're not that large (largest is 600MB). I do pretty
>much everything that needs to be done on them. I've learned quite a bit
>along the way. Am I in a position to go for a well-paid Oracle DBA job
>or is my lack of self-confidence knowledge-wise, well founded?
>
>Thank you gurus !
>
>Ed.
Received on Mon Apr 17 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT