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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: Non Oracle knowledge to be a good Oracle DBA/expert
I'll second what was said here, especially about the Java. I came up in
database programming, I never really became more than familiar with C,
but I can still get along with C programs just fine. A DBA doesn't
really have to be a programmer, but he needs to be able to follow what a
program is doing. In my experience, DBA's generally come up in either
programming or systems, I would be very leery of hiring someone fresh
out of college as a DBA.
I really need to take a java course also, but finding the time is always the problem.
-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Bobak, Mark
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 8:00 AM
To: oralrnr_at_gmail.com; oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RE: Non Oracle knowledge to be a good Oracle DBA/expert
Hi Orlando,
First, I don't think I'm a "Guru", but I'll give this a shot.
This is a difficult question to answer, because noone can know everything, and picking and choosing specific topics is really impossible.
In general, I think a DBA who "came up through the ranks", so to speak, starting out as a developer, has an advantage over someone who came out of school and went straight to DBA work. (But I'm probably biased on that point, cause that's how I did it.)
I think you need a strong understanding of the O/S your database runs on. Oracle relies on the O/S to interface with the hardware, so, understanding how it works, particularly under stress, can be important. For example, if you're involved in a performance tuning problem, and you have a database server that also services non-database load, the first thing you have to determine is, is the bottleneck inside or outside of Oracle? Without at least some knowledge of the O/S and how to monitor it, what to look for, this is going to be difficult to answer.
As far as languages go, well, I was a C programmer before I was a DBA. Does it help? Sure. Is it critical to my work as a DBA? Not usually. Again, it depends on the situation. If your shop does a lot of C coding, and as a DBA, you're involved in lots of code reviews, then knowing some knowledge of C is going to help. Same thing with Java, or any other language. One area that I've been feeling a gap in knowledge is Java. I never learned it. We are getting more and more Java introduced. I feel like I need to at least take a basic Java class, to get a better understanding. Sigh, maybe someday......
Hope that helps,
-Mark
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org on behalf of Orlando L
Sent: Mon 4/9/2007 12:14 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Non Oracle knowledge to be a good Oracle DBA/expert
Gurus,
We all hear about Oracle books and manuals that we should read. What about non Oracle things we need to know to be a DBA? For eg couple of days ago David Litchfield posted a link to an Oracle paper on log buffer internals. The paper had lots of C code in it. Do I have to learn C to become a good DBA? What is the best place to start?
Orlando.
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Received on Mon Apr 09 2007 - 08:17:21 CDT
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