Re: DBA and certification questions?

Not trying to get into a pissing war here, because in part I agree. But I will continue to tell you that if I'm in an interview and some twit asks me some useless syntax crap I'll walk out. When doing VB years ago I had some cloth head ask me which VB controls don't allow you to set focus to them. I thought about it and said those that don;t have handles. He angled his head like a dog listening to a new sound and then said yes, but which ones are those. My point is that memorization rarely works in a tough situation. I'd much rather work with someone who has an understanding of fundamentals and architecture rather than someone who has memorized the pl/sql manual. When faced with a new problem, and how many of us have never had that experience, the memorizer gets stuck quickly. As regards referential integrity if you don't understand that concept I literally do not want you touching my database no matter how many years you have. A failure to understand the basics of the relational concept is good grounds for not hiring someone as a dba, or even as a client/server/web programmer in my opinion.

My point boils down to this, I'd rather hire an inidividual with a solid understanding of fundamentals than someone who has the latest buzz word down pat. The fundamentals person will prove to be valuable almost no matter the situation. The fundamentals person will be able to adapt to the latest buzz word and prove of continuing value But I have a bias that way as I've been in this business 14+ years and have managed Ingres, Sybase ASE and ASA and now Oracle databases. I've worked in assembler, C/C++, Pascal, PL1, Java, VB and a 4GL mapping language. May even wind up doing a little Python. But ask the twit from the VB interview to do any of that and he's lost. I asked him how do you call a C/C++ DLL from VB and he had no idea. Had never touched anything but VB. For similar reasons I would not hire a pl/sql expert who had never done anything else. Nor even a dba who has never programmed - tough to see the issues the programmers see if all one has done is be what I call a 'backup artist'.

  'Tech test' type recruiting is preferred in my opinion for two reasons: 1 - it's easier for the HR people to reduce the number of resumes going through the process. You either have the buzz word with the appropriate number of years or you don't. Course, you might be a complete idiot as mediocrity can indeed survive quite well in most positions in most companies. 2 - syntax style questions are binary in nature. You get it wrong or you get it right. So the interviewer has to do less in the way of real thinking.

By the way, I'm not really trying to argue with you so much as to explore my thoughts on this relative to yours.

One last item and then I'll can it. The thing I'm looking for in an interview is a thinker. Bright people are very hard to come by. And in the end they tend to make the largest contributions. And yes, you can find bright people with the targetted experience, but my belief is that 80% of the whining about not being able to find the right tech employee is caused by being way too narrow in terms of what these companies are looking for. Hence the 'value' of the certifications.

Once again, not really arguing so much as exploring.

Rich Mycroft

> There are different types of DBAs. Some support developers and some
> don't. Some work with custom-developed systems, some work with ERP.
> Different skill sets - though there is some overlap - may be required
> in different areas. For example, PeopleSoft (either HRMS or
> Financials) does not use many (some would say none) of the features
> that differentiate Oracle from any other RDBMS. So an intimate
> knowledge of declarative integrity constraints is probably not
> necessary. If you work with custom-developed apps that use such
> features or that use a lot of packages, stored procedures, etc., then
> such knowledge and a good working knowledge of PL/SQL would have more
> weight. If the DBA is required to develop back-end PL/SQL e.g.
> triggers, stored procedures and the like, then more knowledge of PL/SQL
> and actual hands-on experience doing such development owuld be required.
> Again, if you're using partitioning, some experience would be
> desirable. If you are using advanced replication/distiributed
> database, clearly knowledge of advanced replication features, db links,
> etc and hands-on experience with these would be required. One could go
> on. You might check out the Revealnet website for materials written by
> Mike Ault on hiring DBAs. Food for thought.
>
> HTH.
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
Received on Fri Jul 21 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT