Re: Oracle DBA

B MAC <gucciard_at_creek.uh.edu> wrote in
news:Pine.OSF.4.33.0109201317580.808337-100000_at_creek.uh.edu:

> This brings to another question:
>
> Are DBAs allowed to take long vacations, or do companies discourage
> their DBAs from doing that considering the database may crash?
>
> Thanks again.
>
>

Again I count my blessings, last year I took a two week trip to Italy & Greece. Earlier this year I took a two week trip to China. For both trips my boss had only my hotel itinerary as a means to contact me. I went "unplugged" (no cell phone, no pager, no access to the 'Net what so ever) on both trips. I went with the blessing of my boss on both trips and all my "babies" (11 Oracle DB's) were well behaved in my absence.

One way we accomplish operational stability when either I or my boss goes on vacation (he's my backup) is to enforce a moratorium on ANY changes to the DB or surrounding environment for two weeks prior to our departure. Almost without exception changes precipitate problems. No changes ~= no problems.

All my mission critical DB run with fully Raid-1 volumes. The last time I had to restore a DB due to a hardware failure was 5+ years ago.

One way to both learn Oracle & do some good for your community is to find a local charity that needs a databased application and build it for them in Oracle. After you have taken a project from design to successful implementation, you'll have a MAJOR sense of accomplishment & something VERY worthwhile to add to your resume'.

HTH & HAND! Received on Thu Sep 20 2001 - 19:34:11 CDT