Re: Becoming ORACLE DBA

"DA Morgan" <damorgan_at_psoug.org> wrote in message news:1120335884.72500_at_yasure...
> Mark A wrote:
>
>> It didn't take me 3 years working as a UNIX admin to figure out top, sar,
>> iostat, vmstat, etc. But as stated in other posts, I usually work at
>> places that have a separate UNIX admin staff for the heavy UNIX lifting.
>
> Or RAW or logical volume managers or ethernet bonding or ....
>
>> BTW, I find those UNIX tools almost useless for serious database tuning
>> since most database I/O is asynchronous (in a well-tuned system).
>
> Given that you have never tuned a TB+ Oracle database I'm not surprised.
> Given that you've never worked with RAC I'm not surprised.
> Given that you've never worked with ASM I'm not surprised.
> Given that you've never worked with Grid Control I'm not surprised.
>
> Your experience is NOT my experience nor that of the DBAs and SAs I
> have worked with for more than a decade.
> --
> Daniel A. Morgan

You don't know what experience I have as a DBA. Nevertheless, based on the comments from others in this thread, they consensus seems to be:

1. Many database designs are very poor from a performance, data integrity, and even functional standpoint.
2. The DBA's are the ones with DDL create authority and DBA's almost always get the blame if the design or performance is bad.
3. It is much harder to find someone with good database design skills (and harder to teach), than it is for someone to learn the UNIX technical skills necessary.

Granted there are situations when a technical expert in RAC, streaming, etc is needed. That is often why consultants are hired. Even if these skills are available in house, it not necessary that every DBA be an expert in those skill sets. But I never denied that one needs to be very technical concerning Oracle issues. I said that one does not need to have 3 years UNIX admin experience to be good DBA. Received on Sat Jul 02 2005 - 16:39:13 CDT