Skills for Top Flight DBAs Top-level Oracle DBAs demonstrate the following expert knowledge and skills: 1. Relational database management system (RDBMS) concepts, design, and deployment. 2. Designing, developing, and supporting large RDBMS in the Oracle 8 i or 9i environments. 3. Mastering Oracle database software for installation, upgrading, and configuration. 4. Installing and managing Oracle Parallel Server (OPS). 5. Concepts and practices on logical and physical database design. 6. Skills for database performance tuning ± including server tuning and application tuning. 7. Developing and implementing backup and recovery plans. 8. Writing SQL query scripts and operating system level scripts to mon itor database and perform DBA tasks. 9. Writing PL/SQL stored procedures and packages to implement business logic. 10. Using case tools for data modeling, analyzing business rules and creating entity relationship diagram. 11. Using Oracle Enterprise Manager to perform DBA tasks. 12. Using Oracle RMAN to perform backup/recovery tasks. 13. Data Warehouse and data mart physical structures and design. 14. Using ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Loading) t ools such as PowerMart / In formatica. 15. Some knowledge and working experience on other databases such as IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server. 16. Fundamental knowledge of operating systems (UNIX, Windows, etc) and networking (TCP/IP, Novel, Internet, etc.) 17. Knowledge on specific industry ± banking, financial, insurance, retail, etc. How to Obtain Oracle DBA Skills and Experience There are two kinds of skills in IT ± intelligence based skills and exper ience-based skills. Programming skills, for instance, are intelligence-based skills that count on your brain cells. On the other hand, DBA skills are more likely experience based. DBA skills are obtained from the actual work. If you are in a database related position, you can take advantage of the environment and build these skills that I listed above. If you have a IT job but it is not directly related to database tasks on the server side, you may talk to the DBA to give y ou certain level of access to the database so you can play with it. Most programmers and developers have enough database privileges that they can use to work and play in order to gain database server experience. Even if you don¶t have access to Oracle database at work, or d on¶t work on an IT job at all, you can still get hands-on skills and experience with Oracle database and market your self as a expe rienced Oracle DBA for job switching or re-joining the workforce. All you need is to build an Oracle database environment on your PC, and then, work, play, create, break, do whatever you like on it. That¶s how you get the hands-on experience. You can download the fully functional Oracle database software for trail/testing purpose from Oracle website. Oracle database is available in different editions ± Personal, Standard, and Enterprise. You may start with the Personal Edition that is smaller. If you want to expl ore more advanced Oracle technologies, use the Enterprise Edition. Oracle database software can be installed on WindowsNT/2000/XP and Linux. Ifyour PC is running on Windows 2000 Professional, XP, or Linux, you¶ll be ab le to put Oracle database on it. You need to become a member o f Oracle Technology Network in order to download Oracle s oftware. The membership is free. You just need to go to http://otn.oracle.com/ to sign up. After you create y ou account with user/password, you can go tohttp://otn.oracle.com/software/content.html to download Oracle database software. Oracle database software comes with full set documentations in HTML and PDF format. By fo llowing the instructions in the documentation, you should have no problem to install the software, create a database
