Re: DBA and certification questions?

Rich, I agree with almost everything you've said. I guess I have a conception or a misconception (depending on how you see it) that Oracle DBAs, correction GOOD Oracle DBAs are a step ahead in terms of their knowledge of the guts of oracle.

I agree with you that anyone working with relational databases, whatever their role: DBA, C/S developer, web-developer etc...should have a fundamental knowledge of Relational DB concepts. I wouldn't want anyone who didn't touching my database either.

From reading your response, I am my own ideal DBA candidate. I have a solid understanding of all the fundamentals of relational theory. I know sql like the back of my hand. I'm proficient in PL/SQL. I've a strong aptitude for learning new things and am a self-starter.

But my whole career (until now), I've been a database application developer. Now I'm in this small startup company have had to assume the dba role along with maintaining a my developer status.

I know nothing about the internals of oracle. There's the logical/abstract layer and the physical storage on the disks. Oracle has a layer in between there where it's real guts are.

Things like blocks, buffers, extents, sga, shared pool, initrans, maxextents, nextextents, pctincrease etc, etc... are things that are completely foreign to me...Yet from my (limited) knowledge and reading of documentation here and there, it seems like these are areas where alot of performance gains or degradations can be realized or by setting things up properly you can prevent problems from occurring later down the road.

Shouldn't a DBA should have understanding of those concepts of oracle's internals? It's a much lower-level knowledge base than any application developer would ever have.

I'm purely engaging in intelligent discussion here and not being argumentative. I really appreciate the input.

Gavin

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http://www.keen.com Received on Fri Jul 21 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT