So do you think you want to be an Oracle DBA? Well, first of all, let’s examine the reality of the profession…
Yes, salaries for an experienced Oracle DBA can be very attractive. This has advantages and disadvantages for the DBA. 24/7 on-call service is the norm, expect calls during holidays, weddings, baptisms, surgery, etc. If the DBA is smart and automates much of their work, they better find other ways to *visibly* add value to the business, or they’ll be out of a job.
On the positive side, the profession is always changing and always challenging, and that, for many, keeps it from being boring. The salary can be very good for an experienced database administrator with specialized skills and a degree (six figures), and even better, credentials and leadership/management experience.
A database administrator is not just a mechanic who keeps the database engine tuned up and running. It is involved in capacity planning, which has a financial impact for the company. In many cases, the DBA has a lot of direct contact with the customer if the company manages other companies’ data in some way, and therefore has a very important role in the relationship that the company has with its customers. The DBA is responsible for safeguarding the security and integrity of business data. Negligence on the part of the DBA can ruin a healthy company very quickly.
Ok, ready to start? If you finished school and computer science was not your degree, it is still possible to enter the field. I have a master’s degree in animal physiology and I started studying Oracle because when I took over the environmental data management program at McNeese State University (mumble) years ago, the budget I inherited wasn’t enough. Here are some initial steps:
First, if possible, locate yourself in your current job where you’ll have the opportunity to work with current DBAs, or set up a small database environment from scratch. Maybe you can come up with a small project that doesn’t generate so much data (at least initially) that a lot of extra expensive hardware is needed. If you propose a pilot project, you can justify getting a small server that is nearing the end of its warranty from the spares pool. Make friends with the system administrators of the company. If you’re already familiar with Unix, get a Unix/Linux machine. If you’re new to Unix, try getting a Windows box to flatten your learning curve. You’ll eventually want to learn Linux, though, since more Oracle databases run on Linux in the real world than they do on Windows.
Next, sign up for an (OTN) account on Oracle Corporation’s Technet site, otn.oracle.com (I’m not affiliated with Oracle and don’t benefit from the traffic you get there!). It’s free and you’ll need it to download the software under the Oracle development license (training is a legitimate use of Oracle software under this license agreement). Use this account to access the installation documents for the latest version of Oracle Database. Pay special attention to the hardware requirements.
If the above is not possible, your next option is to purchase some hardware to create a sandbox for yourself. If you can’t afford much, you might want to start with Oracle XE Database. It is small and elegant and can be installed in most laptops. Administration is slightly different in XE, but it’s fine for learning SQL, stopping and starting a database, setting up listeners, and so on.
Once you have your hardware, I recommend that you start with the 2-DBA document, the “Administrator’s Guide”, “Concepts”, and “SQL Language Reference”.
Oracle Database Administration is one big elephant to eat. It’s a great body of knowledge, and it’s a moving target. You are not going to learn it for two days, despite the title of some documentation. Take it one small dick at a time. When you encounter problems during your self-training, do a web search to find how others have fixed the problem. If your company uses Oracle and you have an Oracle support agreement, I recommend that you reach out to your DBA team and ask if you can be added to the company’s CSI as a metalink user. You’ll need to go to metalink and apply for an account at a specific CSI, so you’ll need to get that number from the DBA team. Once you’ve made the request, Metalink sends an email to whoever is the admin of that CSI (Customer Service Identifier), and they have to approve it, so it’s best to talk to the DBAs first. Just tell them that you want to learn Oracle on your own and that you would like to be able to read Metalink Notes.
If you have a lot of money or if your company is willing to pay for training, consider taking some courses with Oracle University. My experience is that I get much more out of Oracle courses if I’ve done a little legwork first to get some exposure to what is being taught. Since the courses are not cheap, it is a good investment of your time. Oracle certification by itself will *not* generally land you a job as an Oracle DBA; however, in a pool of equivalent candidates, it could be the “extra” thing that gets you into an interview. Most companies conduct a technical interview when hiring, often the interview is quite rigorous. Occasionally the interview is too rigorous, ie someone in HR who doesn’t know anything about Oracle has a set of questions that she looked up on the internet and she doesn’t understand either the question or the answer. This may work in your favor in the sense that you probably won’t get a lot of hard follow-up questions…although it may work against you if there is more than one way to do something, and the HR person only has one way in which to do something. ready. in the expected responses. For example, there are many ways to clone a database… clone from a cold copy, mirror rman, export/import… etc…