get my Oracle DBA skills to the dba-2 level

instead of relying on my mentor I figured out some install parameters by Googling and reading documentation! When I sent my list to RF for review/approval I’d gotten everything correct!

as outlined by the workshop presenter last Friday: install Oracle, data movement (sql loader, exp/imp, DataPump), managing objects, backup/recovery, unix skills, monitoring/alerting, performance tuning and basic PL/SQL. Plan: learn all SGA components, their function and be able to diagram them from memory. Learn RMAN backup/recovery. Learn five more unix commands (sed, awk for sure and be able to remember the command to find large files). Look at our current Production databases and know the SGA size, redo log size and other basic init.ora values and why they’re set that way.

and learned a ton from the presenter. I need to quantify what this goals means. Do I want a certain level of understanding of Oracle internals? Do I want my skills to be to the point where I can troubleshoot any Production problem/outage? Do I want to be able to draw an Oracle SGA and all its components and processes from memory? Is it peer approval that means I’ve “arrived” at a certain level? I have a few thoughts about this.

Ordered Craig Shallahamer’s “Oracle Firefighting” book from OraPub yesterday. It should ship July 13th. I like self-study so looking forward to working my way through this book! Also discovered that the awesome Amazon DBA is teaching Oracle workshops locally! How fabulous is that?!? And our team has a training budget this year – so gotta get registered for one of his half-day workshops.

Yesterday I sent a gift-card to the wonderful gentleman who was recruiting me for Amazon. Although I was interviewed twice and made it through two levels of phone screens I was not offered a position. This guy had spent a lot of time with me getting me prepped for the phone interviews, talking about Oracle in general and he turned me on to the Oracle Wait Interface book that enabled me to find the root-cause of the outages we had when we migrated the Production database from Texas to Washington. Our lead DBA architect was out of town on a family emergency that week so my being able to find the root-cause of the outages was a huge bump up in my confidence and also earned respect of my co-workers and manager. So I am really grateful for this guy and have wanted to send some kind of “thank you” for ages now. Christmas felt like the perfect time to express gratitude, so I got a gift-card and sent it off with a short note.

The first phone screen (last week) went really well. I really liked the guy interviewing me and I thought quickly on my feet. The second phone screen (this morning) did not go well. First I had trouble understanding what the gentleman was saying (he was using speakerphone) and then it felt like my brain shut down. I must get clear about this: do I really want to work at Amazon or is there some deeper feeling I’m searching for that I think I’ll get if Amazon hires me?

I got a call from Amazon Friday! I sent back days/times I’m available this week for a phone screen! Think good thoughts for me!!

I tested my hot backup script yesterday. It is almost done. I need to alter the syntax slightly so it does ‘archive log current’ instead of ‘alter system switch logfile’. Making the redo log “current” purges all current activity from the redo logs and writes it to a permanenet .arc log file. I must capture that last bit of activity to fully recover the datafiles after the hot copy. Once this script is working and in Production I am going to work through my Oracle Wait Interface book one chapter at a time. The hotbackup stuff is something every DBA should be able to do. The wait-interface stuff is slightly more esoteric but excellent for diagnosing performance problems.

to expanding my skill set. I passed two phone interviews with Amazon last year; in the end they hired someone much more senior. I’ve been doing this for a year now and I’m comfortable with the basics. I’m working on a hot-backup script which is good for understanding recovery better. Other subjects: SGA/memory structures, space management and performance tuning. I already have a good performance tuning book; at least one chapter a week should be do-able.l.