OT: Getting into the data modeling field

Sorry about the OT post but I'm not sure where to post. I want to get into the data modeling field and would like to know what kind of background I would need. I don't have a CS degree, but I have taken about a half dozen courses in programming. I don't have any practical experience (am currently a computer operator), so what would be a good course of action. Would I have to be a DBA first?. I don't really want to go through the DBA certification (Oracle eg) process as it sounds very expensive and is not really what I want to do.

I think I have quite good analytical and verbal skills. I know that book knowledge does not mean much to recruiters, but I feel that even though I am self taught, I am reaching the point where I can say I know a decent amount about the field. I know my way around ER modeling, a good amount of ORM, but not so much UML. I am fairly knowledgable about normalization, issues related to business rules, etc. I don't know too much about physical implementations, but I can bone up on that. Further, I have 'practical' experience modeling certain web pages that I go to often, Amazon, eg. In short, there is virtually no aspect of data modeling in which I am completely clueless. I think that within six months or so I would be able to create a simple data model in a job interview if called upon to do so.

Anybody have any thoughts, observations, suggestions? In what other newsgroups would this post be more appropriate? Received on Wed Apr 30 2003 - 08:26:51 CDT