I'm a year into being an Apps DBA. I started with 10.7 Smart Client > moved to NCA > and now am installing 11i. I think it's a challenging job because like many people mentioned earlier the patches and scripts provided from Oracle tend to have errors and or create invalid objects.

Also something that you should be aware of is that some of the documentation is full of misleading information, and some of the step by step examples do not work.

In the upgrade manual there are several areas that can not be completed. Oracle knows this, and they are probably too busy dealing with iTars caused by their own documentation to fix the documentation that caused the issues.

Just to install 10.7 and patch it to the current release took at least 6 months. This was partially due to the fact that I had no Oracle Financials experience at the time.

As far as Oracle Metalink and Support goes, I find that once I learned how to properly use the advance search feature of Metalink, I could wade through some of the more advanced issues and solve technical issues on my own. In fact, I have solved stuff that the support staff worked on for weeks and couldn't resolve (i was simply lucky and fell onto a solution - not because i necessarily was more skilled).

The key to being a good Apps DBA is knowing that most things that seem simple can turn into a big project, and ALWAYS do a backup before you do ANYTHING. It may seem as simple as applying a 3 minute patch, you should still backup if at all possible. This is preaching to the choir for most DBA's, but going from first hand experience, not backing up daily during patches can be so so ugly.

Although it's frustrating, being an Apps DBA is interesting because you are dealing with something that can be used as a ERP if the company decides to go that way.