RE: guidance for career in US as D.B.A.

Hi neena

> Hi All ,
> I am in India . I am an OCP DBA (8i)
> having three years IT experience ( Oracle( 7.3, 8 ) and
> Developer2000 , OS -
> windows NT).Three months back I have joined one of the known
> company of India. The role of mine in the present job is
> of DBA. I
> have to handle two Oracle 7.3 databases on AIX of an
> application which is stable since last five years. As the
> application is stable I am
> not getting good / challenging exposure to DBA activities.
First imp thing is that u always be in this situation. once the app becomes stable u will always find urself idle.

1. Design a Disaster Recovery plan doc for ur db
2. Write db health check routines
3. research and find out how fatal bugs in 7.3 can stop ur production site
4. find out what wld stop (techincally) from migrating to 8i
5. learn AIX

> My aim is to go to US . Can you guide me :
Well the green paper is always yummy...

>
> 1.. How to get the list of good firms in US , to apply for a
> DBA post ?

www.dbajobs.com
www.dice.com

> 2. Shall I change my present job , just because the database
> is of older version ( which I was not knowing while joining
> ) ?

change ur job if u dont hv work. not the question of version. its the question of what u know in that version. remember versions will keep on coming.
by the time u come to US and settle here, it may be 9i, who knows. there r many gurus on this list who r masters in 7.x, cos that what their job demanded. i met a guy in LA who had worked for NASA and had been working on almost all types of unixes and oracle 7, was a dba, but hardly knew any features of 8i. well he didnt found a need to keep up to date.

> 3. Will certification of Sun Solaris System Administration be
> helpful to me?

learning an OS never harms. it wld certainly add to ur resume.

> 4. Will an Advanced DBA course ( Oracle parallel server,
> Replication, distributed DB) be helpful to me ?
where will u apply that? well u can always learn everything, but try to balance it against ur job requirements and in which sector of Oracle admin u want to excel.

For a start why dont u try getting ur OCP in 8i.

>
> -- neena
>

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