Certified DBA and So What?

[grjohnson]

"The DBA role is way to critical to hand over to somebody that has no experience. "

I'm not saying give the Grad/New starter free rein to the production system, like everyone else who starts a new job with no experience, they have to start somewhere and learning the basics and getting some 'hands-on' in a DBA role is a great idea.

Sure you can't expect them to know how to tune the rollback segments or redo buffer cache and understand everything, but everybody learns.

There are some things I bet, even 10 years experince DBAs wouldn't know. What about Oracle Text Indexing? Who would know about that if the didn't use it, a DBA with 1 years ex, may hold more knowledge on that area than a DBA with 10 years.

[marist89]

Originally posted by grjohnson
I'm not saying give the Grad/New starter free rein to the production system, like everyone else who starts a new job with no experience, they have to start somewhere and learning the basics and getting some 'hands-on' in a DBA role is a great idea.

Great! We agree that the DBA role is not an entry-level job.

[ngwh]

does anyone has any idea how many OCP DBAs are there in this planet ???
just for curiosity sake...hehe

junior

[OraMan]

About 60,000 certified professionals

http://www.oracle.com/education/cert...l?60kocps.html

[oddster]

If there's 60,000 OCPs, imagine how many DBAs are without it.

I think I'd rather have it, than be one of the few.

At the very least, it shows your skills and knowledge are not out of date.

[grjohnson]

"DBA role is not an entry-level job", then neither is a programmer role.

Everyone has to start learning somewhere.

Junior DBA can be a start position, you give then minor tasks and build up. They are like a DBA apprentices.

[jhmartin]

One thing I'd liked to point out about certification is that it really can't hurt to have. Obviously experience is the most important qualification. If I go in to an interview with an OCP pin and can't tell the difference between a multi-threaded or dedicated server setup, I'm going to look pretty bad. If I go in without the OCP pin I'm still going to look bad, except now I don't have any indication that I even bothered to do more then read the feature-list of Oracle.

In neither case am I likely to get the job, but if I can go in to an interview, be able to speak intelligently about databases in general and have an OCP pin that indicates I have at least once read over the oracle documentation, I'm going to look a little better then an equivalent person w/no OCP pin.

If I'm competing with a 10-yr oracle veteran who has been DBA'ing since Oracle originally came out, OCP or no OCP that guy is likely to get the job instead of me. However, at no point did having OCP hurt me.

The only place it hurts is the investment of funds to take the tests, but if one's company will reimburse you for passed tests or one can reasonably expect to recoup the investment in the form of higher salaries later, it is a good decision.

[oddster]

Nice one JH,

A sensible response for once- in a nutshell.

I can't believe that this discussion has spanned 11 pages!!

rgds,

[sambavan]

Waw ...

I darn had missed this thread, its darn great

God forgive me for missing this discussion
Sam

[L-Carvone]

First of all I'd like to say this has been a great thread full of useful information covering (obviously) varied perpspectives. I myself am in the midst of a career change from the food/chemical/sensory industry. My soon-to-be previous employer is providing me with a large chunk of change for re-education so I am following my dream if you will to enter the IT field ; more specifically Oracle. A jump from virtually no experience (although I was a part time help desk tech for 4 years) to Oracle DBA is about as steep as you can get but my choices are somewhat limited as to where and what times I can train. I intend to devote approx. 12-16 months to achieve certification all the while using as many real world type examples (sample databases etc.) as I can.

Once complete I will not look for a DBA job right away but possibly a DBO or other true entry level position until I get at least a year under my belt to gain the confidence and actual experience needed to know my limitations and strong points. This will in turn begin to validate the OCP I have acheived and slowly build my worth. My question to you folks is how realistic in your mind is this agenda and what jobs should I look for when I am ready to start applying my training?