Re: The demise of the Oracle professional?

Hi Roger,

For the foreseeable future, there will be the need for a Oracle DBA. There may be fewer positions that previously and maybe the pretenders will struggle but I see nothing that suggests the Oracle DBA will become defunct.

I've always seen the role of the DBA having a lot of parallels to that of a commercial pilot (albeit without the glamour, air stewardess and raybans). As modern aircraft (databases) become more and more sophisticated, and as autopilot technology (self tuning, space management control etc) improves, the pilot is as important as ever. For when something goes wrong, who do we all hope is highly trained and experienced enough to ensure no disaster occurs. And just as passenger safety is vital to airline companies, so is information safety for pretty well all major organisations.

Some key differences though are that pilots don't have to tune and ensure their aircraft is fit for travel and pilots need to do a bit more than answer a few multiple choice questions to be "certified" and deemed fit to fly !!

When planes can fly, land, fight off terrorists, deal with loss of engines, no landing gear and cyclone weather conditions all by themselves, then maybe we won't need a DBA either.

My thoughts

Richard

"Roger Redford" <dba_222_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message news:a8c29269.0206081606.1cf62331_at_posting.google.com...
> Hi all,
>
> Often I wonder about the job market. In particular,
> the job market for people with my Oracle skill sets.
>
> When I started in the mid 90's, and client server
> was the technology of the day, it was not unusual
> to have a number of Oracle developers and a DBA
> in the coveted DBA position. All the developers knew
> both the GUI tool, and Oracle.
>
> Now, I am working in a big company. The IT department
> in my division experienced layoffs recently. Most all of
> the layoffs were Oracle people. But there were no
> layoffs of java people, or business analysts.
>
> In my unit, there was only myself and another. Now I have
> to do all his work too. He just found a job after about 6
> months of searching. He is working in a company that has
> 40 java developers, and only 4 database people! He is
> outnumbered 10 to 1.
>
> And I now work with 10 others, as the only dedicated
> Oracle expertise, so I am also outnumbered 10 to 1. I
> maintain 4 legacy systems that I didn't develop, and
> work on the development of 2 systems. And I am slated
> to also work on yet another big upcoming project as the
> only database expertise. There is a LOT of work to do.
> There is really too much work to do for one person, and
> still do a great job.
>
> The management does not want the other java people
> or analysts to learn Oracle. The analsyts are
> supposed to come up with something; I am supposed
> to then figure out how to implement it. So, systems are
> designed by beginners who do not develop in Oracle,
> or study database design. It's like they consider Oracle
> an extension of the operating system, that can
> be modified with their mouse.
>
> I remember the Novell CNEs. In 1995, these people
> were highly demanded. But now, they are lucky to
> be working, the market has been taken over by
> Microsoft networking.
>
> Since early 2000, I have been the only Oracle
> expertise in the entire organization. No more
> teams of Oracle people. Just me singlehandedly
> trying to keep it all working.
>
> The new 9i supposedly makes Oracle administration
> much easier, so I expect that there will be
> even less demand for a DBA.
>
> So, I wonder about the future as an Oracle
> professional.
>
> What is your experience? What is your ratio of
> Oracle expertise, to those with none? (By expertise,
> I mean someone who does use sqlplus, writes their
> own queries to the data dictionary, and writes a
> stored procedure or function at will.) Are you
> increasingly expected to do more and more work?
> Are backups never looked at, because you have
> too much development to do? Does management see
> no value in having any other tech people learn
> Oracle? Do you no longer have time to read or
> answer the newsgroups?
>
> Thanks a lot.
Received on Wed Jun 12 2002 - 04:24:16 CDT