Antwort: Re: "Practicing" Oracle performance tuning ...

> guess I need to spend at-least about a few months reading through
> basic stuff, before I get to understand / troubleshoot tuning
> problems.� Generally how many months / years do people spend
> learning these kinds of things?

Several years. But I think it's something you grow into, nobody starts as a "DB tuner". Starting as a developer or system/database administrator, you will see enough cases to optimize. There's simply not common "red line" to follow.

> And is it possible to learn these
> things on NON-on-the-job training at all?
I don't think so. It's not just because you don't have the options a company provides (high perfomance machines are causing other trouble than your notebook with a test DB and a silly load generator), it's mostly because you will experience a lack of cases. Its in a way comparable with programming: You can learn some basics at home, but as soon you have to do it in a professional context, you feel the difference.

But to answer your initial question:

If there's a chance to learn this great business on the job: After some months you will start to know what you are talking about. :) At this point, you can decide how to specialize or what's fun and what's not: Now you will become better each day. How good your skills become, depends on your environment - given, that you are always interested to push your borders. None of these points has an end, each new problem will teach you something by force.

If you have to learn for yourself without a more-or-less-important production machine to optimize: Bad luck. But there are some options: Build up strong basic skills (90% of the sources to learn from are free on the web!), do certifications as DBA and for tuning (they are only a learning goal for you, not a solution for anything!). (One link of the best IMHO: http://www.oracle.com/pls/db102/homepage) Look for a junior or sole DBA job as soon as possible!

Furthermore: participate in the community of your choice. This ML, the Oracle Technet Forums or irc.freenode.net #oracle - whatever: You have the chance to

- ask questions (least effective for learning something completely new)
- learn from other's problems (more effective)
- find solutions for other's problems and post them / discuss them (most

Regards

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Martin Klier
Senior Oracle Database Administrator
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