I do know of DBAs that have started out with no practical experience but it
is extreamly rare. I had problems communicating technical issues with them
because they had had no exposure to the tools I was working with and didn't
understand what I was talking about. As for myself, I was brought into two
different companies as a developer but expressed a strong interest in the
DBA training. A month after I started at my current job the DBA was away at
training and the manager that served as backup was flying to a business
meeting when the database crashed. You guessed it Training started the
next week. DBAs (in my limited experience) always seem to have tons of
things to do and are happy to have any help they can get. (Admittedly this
has been in shops that are developing a new system and not just maintaining
it) The OCP has value to get you in the door for an interview but the
techies will tear you apart if you don't have any experience. My best
recommendation would be to install oracle at home. Break it and fix it.
Blow away an instance and see if you can restore it. Learn how to tune it.
You will at least have some experience (and found out if you really want to
do this.) Learn SQL and PL/SQL. You will need to be able to write your own
scripts. While there are a lot that are freely available they will need to
be tweaked to work on your particular system. Study for the OCP. There is
a lot of information that you can learn in the process but I know of an OCP
that has no experience and would hesitate to drop him into anything other
than a JR role with heavy monitoring. Just my $.02 worth
<daniel_mather_at_my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8usotv$3pp$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com...
> I wanted to try this question out on on this newsgroup, because i can
> expect an unbiased answer. I am an Aerospace Engineer who has a serious
> interest in becoming an Oracle DBA. Everytime i talk to an Oracle
> training center, they always want to lure me in to train as a Developer
> first ($$$), and then get some EXPERIENCE, and then come back and take
> the DBA course ($$$) within a few months. Seems like they just want the
> money twofold. I'm no Oracle expert, but i know Developer functions
> have nothing to do with what a DBA does, except for the basic SQL,
> PL/SQL...
> I have no interest doing Oracle applications development - i strictly
> want to be a DBA.
> I already know UNIX, PERL, and some JAVA fairly well from my current
> work, and have done some programming with them, although they were all
> in an Engineering role - not in an Oracle function.
> Is it wise to just take the Oracle DBA course and the OCP tests and
> start looking for a Jr. DBA job. What are the odds of that working out.
> Thanks for your comments and advice!
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
Received on Wed Nov 15 2000 - 09:03:55 CST
