Re: Oracle 7 DBA - Becoming competent

Greetings,

        My strategy is to preserve integrity and play safe with production systems. Process, Process, Process. And more process.

Record what you do, change control, version control etc. Backup files you change, put dates on them, maintain a personal log, don't work on two databases at a time. Colour your screens differently if you have to.

Always think about how you can backout something you are about to do. Never risk it. Take a backup, check that archive logs are available. Switch logs and archive off the last redo log. Shutdown/startup for a clean working/recovery point (logs still must be archive though!).

Understand what you doing before doing it. You will soon learn what experimenting you can do, how much you don't know! Always try out things on a test system.

Use your alert log file and smon, pmon files to check on what the database is doing.

The OReily book on Oracle Performance Tuning is a good reference. Australian authors.

Remember play safe. Always think about how one can recover from a task. Assess risk, and if you think, should I or shouldn't I take a quick backup, or spool a listing out to disk for reference back incase.....just do it.

Learn about all the objects in oracle, schemas, roles, permissions, tablespaces, datafiles, tables, view, contraints, grants, triggers, RI, etc etc.

Learn lots about Export and Import....its a good way to learn how objects hang together. How a database is built/unloaded in full export. When grants go back on, when contraints are loaded, when the dictionary is loaded.

Hope this is of help....regards, Ian Evans IEvans_at_nm.com eon_at_mira.net

satar_at_my-dejanews.com wrote:

>There is no one essential thing to learn about Oracle. Everything about
>Oracle is important. As a DBA, something new pops up on a daily basis,
>whether it is help designing a database, meeting user's requirements, or
>proactive tuning. As a consultant, most of my projects have been Database
>Layout (on a server) and installation, Database Tuning, proposing various
>types of Back-up strategies, and offerring advice about numerous subjects.

>I initially learned Oracle by attending Oracle Eduaction's DBA Masters
>program. But the majority of my learning has been "jumping in the deep in" as
>a DBA.

>No comment on the book, never hear of it.

>good luck,
>Satar
>In article <3621AE03.5122_at_basford.demon.co.uk>,
> Ed <Ed_at_basford.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I'm a newbie and was wondering if anybody could tell me the essential
>> things to learn about Oracle. I've read some of the Oracle DBA book and
>> it's well written, but I'd like to focus on what's really important and
>> then fill in the gaps later on?
>>
>> How have you learned Oracle?
>>
>> Also, is Oracle 7 for Dummies any good?
>>
>> Thanks in anticipation.
>>
>> Ed.
>>

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Received on Thu Oct 15 1998 - 15:18:06 CDT