DBA - need to be a "great" programmer?

I'm thinking of becoming an Oracle DBA after about 12 years of working as a Project Manager/Business Analyst. My degree is in computer science and although I worked as a programmer for the first 2-3 years of my career, I never considered myself a great programmer. Given that I've been away from it for so long, I will essentially be starting over to some degree. I've learned some Oracle SQL and have no problems with it so far.

Is it possible to become an effective DBA without being an expert programmer? I just purchased an Oracle Press book (DBA 101) and it seems to me that while there's a need to be able to write and interpret SQL scripts, much time is spent doing non-programming activities as well. I know this is stating the obvious, but "DBA" means so many different things to so many companies, so my hope is to be able to attain a basic set of "technical" DBA skills and then combine that with data modeling skills, which I think would build nicely from my previous business and management experience.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or advice will be appreciated. Thanks! Received on Thu Mar 29 2001 - 11:21:20 CST