Re: dba mentor

I was a PRO*C/OCI, PL/SQL, and SQL developer (i.e. SQL*Forms, etc) working for Oracle consulting when my customer fired their entire IT department in one day.  This all happened immediately after the events chronicled in my chapter in "Tales Of The Oak Table:  Oracle Insights <https://www.amazon.com/Oracle-Insights-Tales-Oak-Table/dp/1590593871>", which is reprinted (with permission from Apress) online HERE <https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/opinion-pieces/bad-carma/>.

I was moved into the role of DBA, and that very first day, the production database started crashing, and I brought it back up twice.  The third time it crashed, it stayed down because of media failure.  I had to call Iron Mountain to retrieve the backup tapes, and when they returned the lockboxes, nobody could find the key, so I had to jimmy the boxes open with a hammer and screwdriver.  We restored production, but were unable to roll forward to the point-in-time of failure due to a missing archived log file.  After production was back up and running, we ran out of space and I discovered that we were almost completely out of disk, so I unmirrored all of the raw logical volumes underlying the index tablespaces in order to create new logical volumes, mirrored to table tablespaces and unmirrored for index tablespaces.  Then I went home to sleep.  I was the DBA for 10 months until the company completed the process of migrating their mission-critical application from the custom-built Oracle-based application (i.e. VISION from the book chapter) to a much-older RMS-based VT100 application on VMS.  At one point, the previous DBA returned to visit colleagues, and when he heard that I had brought the database back online 3 times my first day, ending with an incomplete recovery, he called me an idiot because "he should have left it down after the first crash and gotten those disks fixed", an assessment with which I cannot argue.  As an Oracle employee, I had the resources of my colleagues and the company, including an internal email list called HELPKERN.  I met people on HELPKERN with whom I am still in contact today, and it was because of HELPKERN that I joined ORACLE-L when I left Oracle in 1998.

The collective expertise on HELPKERN and then ORACLE-L has been my mentor.

On 8/22/18 06:33, Sheehan, Jeremy wrote:
>
> I went from Super PC Technician to Junior DBA at my previous company.
> I had a mentor for about 6 months then he jumped ship at the first
> sign of trouble in the company. That left me to fend for myself for
> about 2 years. I learned a little from him, but most of what I learned
> I had to learn myself. Fortunately, I moved companies and was placed
> on a team where I had a number of people that I could ask questions,
> but never got any real kind of mentoring. I’ve got 10+ years of
> experience now, but still feel kind of shaky on certain topics.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeremy
>
> *From:*oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org <oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org>
> *On Behalf Of *Jeff Chirco
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 21, 2018 3:51 PM
> *To:* oracle-l-freelist <oracle-l_at_freelists.org>
> *Subject:* dba mentor
>
> CAUTION - EXTERNAL EMAIL
>
> Did any of you have a mentor to help you along your DBA career path?
> Someone to coach you on what is right/wrong, offer advice for various
> projects, etc…  I was the first DBA for my company and never had
> someone to go to for advice and such.  I learned completely on the job
> besides going to some classes at the beginning and a couple
> conferences recently.  And then some consultants over the years.  I’ve
> always reported to a Programming manager, and they understand some of
> the job but not everything that needs to be done.  Although I have
> been a DBA for over 10 years I feel there is still a ton for me to
> learn and be better at. I was alone for many years and did a lot of
> database development in addition to DBA duties. Kind of a jack of all
> trades expert at none. I am a lead now, we have one other DBA and
> maybe a third in the near future, but I know I can be a better leader
> and hope to advance that further.
>
> Did any of you have some kind of mentor during your career? For most
> of you it probably was someone inside the company but what about
> outside?  How did you find this person and was it helpful?  What did
> they do for you?
>
> Another other details or advice?
>
> Thanks,
>

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