Re: Becoming ORACLE DBA

Mark A wrote:

> I didn't say one can be a good Oracle DBA with less than 3 years experience.
> I said that one does not have to work for 3 years as a UNIX admin before
> becoming a DBA.

If someone is not a UNIX admin what are they doing?

Word processing?
Spreadsheets?
Email?

And if they can't performance tune an i/o or storage problem of what use are their UNIX skills? Are they even going to know basics such as umask? chown? chgrp? Do non admin's run top? sar? and other diagnostic tools?

  Obviously, UNIX experience is needed, but it does not have
> to be obtained by working as a UNIX admin.

See above.

> And obviously it takes a lot more than UNIX knowledge to be a good DBA.

Agreed. But I didn't say 3 years of UNIX system admin only. I recall saying or PL/SQL development. Why are you ignoring that part and focusing just on this?

Or do you think a DBA has a prayer of being competent if they can't read and write PL/SQL?

> The whole point of this thread was that someone is considering becoming an
> Oracle DBA as a career choice. Obviously, in that case, he would have to
> start out at the bottom.

The bottom of Oracle DBA is someone with previous experience in UNIX or PL/SQL. Not someone that knows how to change a CD.

Maybe in the DB2 world you take what you can get. But in Oracle there is a depth of experienced people from which to choose: And we do.

> I think it is more valuable to have some
> application development and database design experience, while at the same
> time making sure to get some UNIX experience (not necessarily having to work
> for 3 years as a UNIX admin) before becoming a DBA.

I think I said that in my original post when I said UNIX OR PL/SQL. But you have developed tunnel vision on UNIX and ignored the balance of what I wrote.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)