Oracle experience, cert., and DBA positions

[hoffmak]

Hi Guys

I have a general Oracle/employment related question. I currently have taken the entire Oracle 8i Training track (SQL up thru Network Admin). I support a third party database, which means I basically do security, backups, SQL, and client setups. I have done a major migration from 7.3.4 to 8i, and have troubleshooted many problems with Oracle.

Can any DBA's out there tell me how valuable this training and experience may be in obtaining a position as a junior level Oracle DBA? I am the only Oracle person in our entire IT shop, and so I have no frame of reference to gauge what is in demand. I plan on leaving my position to go (somewhere???) when my significant other is done with college in a year. Would certification help me find an Oracle position? I enjoy the challenge of working with Oracle, and would like to get into a position where I could do dedicated work on Oracle systems and maybe even get into development if the environment so allowed.

Thanks. I appreciate your input.

[marist89]

Obtaining a position as a Jr. DBA? I'd say you were already performing the duties of a Jr. DBA.

This experience and training is very valuable to your Oracle career. If you have been doing these duties 100% of the time for less than 2 years, another Jr. DBA position will be right up your alley. If you've been doing this for > 2 years, you're well on your way to a DBA position.

Certification, IMHO, is only the icing on the cake for potential employers. Certification certainly won't get you in the door, but may give you the advantage over other candidates with all other things being equal.

There are several disadvantages to certification as well. The designation of OCP DBA has taken on negative connotations because of the over-abundance of paper OCP's out there. There is a perception in the marketplace (rightfully so) that there are lots of unqualified people out there that have a piece of paper that shows they sat through 7 or 8 exams and chose enough correct answers.

In addition, OCP's with some experience run the risk of being perceived as "Over qualified" for a Jr. level position.

Good luck in your search...

[Tarry]

Going for OCP will help you gauge better.In fact in my strong opinion it's the best way to scale your skills.
And it'll reaffirm your confidence before stepping out there, I haven't seen myself positions of jr. DBA's anywhere.
There is nothing like overqualified or under, ou've gotta say what you can do and do what you promised.

Tarry

[julian]

Experience is as meaningless to a certain extent as certification is. After having said that you might wonder what then is relevant. There are people who have been working with Oracle (SQL queries, create table, some procedures, etc) who have never heard of indexes, not to mention histograms. On the other hand there are people who have been doing Oracle stuff for one year and have learnt really a lot. Same with certification: as Jeff told you there are these paper-OCPs and Oracle gurus who have never heard of the certification programme (in that case it's not unusual to ask are they really gurus).

Bottom line: getting the right job is up to some luck most of all. The interviewer might not like your tie or might not like that fact that you show up without a tie :-) It is hard to prove in an interview that you know Oracle well. The OCP degree helps here. I suggest you just do what you think is best. Which country do you live in?

[hoffmak]

Thanks for your replies.

Julian, I am in the US, in Oklahoma, to be exact, employed in a higher education environment. Not exactly an area where Oracle skills are in high demand, which is part of the reason for my inquiry.

My relocation will be anywhere but Oklahoma :-)

Thanks

[TimHall]

I agree with Julian. The senior/junior DBA issue is less about years and more about experience. I once did six months of 24/7 support on a very fragile system. I think I learnt more in that 6 months than the prior 2 years. Some people will work for 10 years and never be tested. Are these people senior DBAs? I don't think so!

The OCP is good for your own confidence level. it will give you a good idea of what you are good at and where you need more work.

Most of the agencies I speak to in the UK are impressed by the OCP status as there are still comparatively few around. That said, I don't know any that count it as a substitute for experience. I think your resume will separate you from paper-only OCPs.

Cheers

[yoda]

"What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print."
-Isadora Duncan, My Life

[hoffmak]

Well I guess an extension of this question would be:
how do you as professionals define Sr. DBA's vs. DBA's or Jr. DBA's (it seems to be kind of a grey area), and how much demand is there for non-Sr. DBA's? Most Oracle DBA job listings seem to want individuals with Sr. level experience.

Thanks

[TimHall]

To me a DBA should aim to know the engine better than anyone else in the company and help in all phases of the application life cycle by giving useful advice. The DBA can help avoid bad design decisions in the early stages, advise developers on good coding practices and tune and maintain the database before, during and after the move to production.

With this in mind I suppose a junior DBA can't do all this and a senior DBA can.

Just my opinion

[stecal]

You will run into people who call themselves senior DBA's, and they are about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. When they want to look really important, they add "database architect" to their signature line. Senior to me may mean 8 yrs experience; senior to you may mean 5 yrs experience. Who is to say what senior really means? It's relative.

Junior, however, is easier to define. I haven't run into anyone in a long time who took or had Oracle training, with no prior Oracle experience, and walked in off of the street into a junior DBA job. Nowadays, you work in some other Oracle-related position (help desk, tech support, test engineer, developer) and evolve into a junior DBA. A lot of ads, not that there a lot of ads, but a lot of the ones that are out there, ask for 1-4 yrs experience for a junior DBA position. How did you get the 1-4 yrs experience in the first place? It's a Catch-22 situation: it takes experience to get experience, so how do you get experience in the first place?

So, I guess before you become a junior DBA, your title is DBA-wannabe. Getting your foot in the door is the hard part; after that, it is easier to move around and get experience.