Paper DBA!

I guess many of you have misunderstood my viewpoints. I do agree with you all that experience is a must to have for any mission critical system or any kind of sustainment process, you can't afford to mess with them. But what I am hinting at is not for the production systems where you will involve a fresh DBA who has just walked in, but during the development and enhancement processes. I will be very surprised that any organization would ask a DBA to just come in and take control of the Production or mission critical systems, there will of course be a transition phase.
However, my observations in general have been following w.r.t many old, seasoned and experienced DBAs:
1. Many of them ridicule the OCP process and in the process they hardly get a chance to even know about the newest features. Many of them have a syndrome of "I know everything..!" There are many new concepts evolving and they usually are missing something. Again not applicable for all old, experienced DBAs, so do not get offended if you are an old timer AND take pains to keep on updating yourself.
2. Sometimes they rely on their old concepts or experience more than referring to any new book or reference manuals. There are some old DBAs who have not accepted CBO fully and still insist for RBO and complex hints in the queries. There are some who still believe that Ratio based tuning is the best way to tune a database.
3. Many of the old DBAs could not cope up successfully with the newer concepts of Oracle, particularly Object Oriented (LOBs, Data Types etc.) and Java enhancements. Those who took the courses or went for OCP, certainly have better grip over these new features.

Well, I am not trying to create a division between old and fresh DBAs, the intent of my pointing out these deficiencies of some of the old time DBAs was to prove the point that if old time DBAs have an edge over the fresh DBAs by virtue of experience then New DBAs do have a distinct advantage with their latest knowledge over them. What is new today will become old tomorrow and the process will continue as has been in the past...!

[Edited by freemind on 10-18-2002 at 10:17 AM]

Most hiring managers I know (but then again, I work with established companies that understand the value of data and not some fly-by-night .com company that develops a system with "trial" software) would rather hire experience than somebody who studied the newest, latest, greatest features of Oracle but has never laid their hands on a system. I'm not quite clear on what advantage that gives fresh OCPs, but if you say so...

[Edited by marist89 on 10-18-2002 at 10:20 AM]

Depends what the hiring managers are looking for...if the database is old and critical, I agree all they will look for is "SOLID" experience as they point out in the requirements criteria!
However, there are some shrink wrapped, vendor supplied apps which use some of the latest features (after all whatever new features are coming , are not for the worse, sure there might be some bugs here and there but they have come to stay not to be tried just for fancy..!) and to support these kinds of databases, I know for sure that many hiring managers specifically ask for OCP or training on these new features (you can't have "experience" here for these new features).

Quote:

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Originally posted by freemind
I guess many of you have misunderstood my viewpoints. I do agree with you all that experience is a must to have for any mission critical system or any kind of sustainment process, you can't afford to mess with them. But what I am hinting at is not for the production systems where you will involve a fresh DBA who has just walked in, but during the development and enhancement processes. I will be very surprised that any organization would ask a DBA to just come in and take control of the Production or mission critical systems, there will of course be a transition phase.
However, my observations in general have been following w.r.t many old, seasoned and experienced DBAs:
1. Many of them ridicule the OCP process and in the process they hardly get a chance to even know about the newest features. Many of them have a syndrome of "I know everything..!" There are many new concepts evolving and they usually are missing something. Again not applicable for all old, experienced DBAs, so do not get offended if you are an old timer AND take pains to keep on updating yourself.
2. Sometimes they rely on their old concepts or experience more than referring to any new book or reference manuals. There are some old DBAs who have not accepted CBO fully and still insist for RBO and complex hints in the queries. There are some who still believe that Ratio based tuning is the best way to tune a database.
3. Many of the old DBAs could not cope up successfully with the newer concepts of Oracle, particularly Object Oriented (LOBs, Data Types etc.) and Java enhancements. Those who took the courses or went for OCP, certainly have better grip over these new features.

Well, I am not trying to create a division between old and fresh DBAs, the intent of my pointing out these deficiencies of some of the old time DBAs was to prove the point that if old time DBAs have an edge over the fresh DBAs by virtue of experience then New DBAs do have a distinct advantage with their latest knowledge over them. What is new today will become old tomorrow and the process will continue as has been in the past...!

[Edited by freemind on 10-18-2002 at 10:17 AM]

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regarding 1, mind you not getting OCP would not get you to know new features, I am an example, I passed 9i upgrade with no problems at all and hey all I read was the ILT course notes which is NOT detailed at all (if you think by reading ILT you can set up data guard or RAC we must be very wrong!)

regarding 2 since I am not old enough :D I cannot give opinion here, I can cope with CBO and event waits based tuning pretty well

regarding 3, being an OCP or passed the exams dont buy you the knowledge on object oriented at all, in fact in no course it talks about these stuffs

What one can do is be self-motivated and get himself to know the things

and as I mentioned the OCP tests are simply too simple, the questions are really a shame

Quote:

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Originally posted by freemind
I guess many of you have misunderstood my viewpoints. I do agree with you all that experience is a must to have for any mission critical system or any kind of sustainment process, you can't afford to mess with them. But what I am hinting at is not for the production systems where you will involve a fresh DBA who has just walked in, but during the development and enhancement processes. I will be very surprised that any organization would ask a DBA to just come in and take control of the Production or mission critical systems, there will of course be a transition phase.
However, my observations in general have been following w.r.t many old, seasoned and experienced DBAs:
1. Many of them ridicule the OCP process and in the process they hardly get a chance to even know about the newest features. Many of them have a syndrome of "I know everything..!" There are many new concepts evolving and they usually are missing something. Again not applicable for all old, experienced DBAs, so do not get offended if you are an old timer AND take pains to keep on updating yourself.
2. Sometimes they rely on their old concepts or experience more than referring to any new book or reference manuals. There are some old DBAs who have not accepted CBO fully and still insist for RBO and complex hints in the queries. There are some who still believe that Ratio based tuning is the best way to tune a database.
3. Many of the old DBAs could not cope up successfully with the newer concepts of Oracle, particularly Object Oriented (LOBs, Data Types etc.) and Java enhancements. Those who took the courses or went for OCP, certainly have better grip over these new features.

Well, I am not trying to create a division between old and fresh DBAs, the intent of my pointing out these deficiencies of some of the old time DBAs was to prove the point that if old time DBAs have an edge over the fresh DBAs by virtue of experience then New DBAs do have a distinct advantage with their latest knowledge over them. What is new today will become old tomorrow and the process will continue as has been in the past...!

[Edited by freemind on 10-18-2002 at 10:17 AM]

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1. I DO know everything!
2. I use CBO but still have to rely on hints because I know my data better than Oracle does. Does that make me old fashion?
3. Many of the paper OCPs in these forums have no clue about Temporay Segments and tkprof let alone OO and Java. So OCP = I know every new feature?

Thank you guys!.

It is really nice of you.

The suggestions by Sanjay Zha are very useful.
Thanks Sanjay.

PraKul.