Job Update and New Articles…

 

One of my reasons for taking a regular DBA job was to reconnect with the day-to-day of being an Oracle DBA. It’s very easy to get rose-coloured spectacles when you are not in the trenches. If I ever had them before, they have certainly been removed now. 🙂

Probably the most frustrating thing about my current role is my employer and I can’t agree on what an Oracle DBA is. I have a very firm idea of my skill set and what value I can add to an organisation. My employer seems to think an Oracle DBA just does whatever random thing that is asked of them. I’ve had a number of discussions with them about this, but it looks like we will have to agree to disagree. Despite this frustration, it’s a really cool group of people and I really look forward to going to work every day.

Just before I left for the OTN Tour of Latin America, the permanent DBA handed in his notice, which is a shame because he was a good guy and it would have been nice to spend some more time working with him. Yesterday was his last day, meaning on Tuesday I’ll be the only DBA in the company for a few weeks until his replacement arrives. Added to that, the guy that just left had a pretty strong middleware skill set, so as of Tuesday I’m also the company middleware guru. [pause, while I wait for you to stop laughing] From a middleware perspective, I can get the job done, but it’s far from being a strong point for me.

Me being at OpenWorld will leave the company without a DBA for a while. I think I’m going to have to sort out remote access in case anything bad happens…

I was hoping having a regular job would provide some inspiration as far as new articles was concerned. What has tended to happen is I’ve found myself going back over old articles and filling in the gaps, as well as writing new articles on old subjects. In many cases, I’ve not bothered to promote the articles to the front page since an article on a 10 year old bit of Oracle kit, like Oracle Application Server, is not high on most people’s reading lists. 🙂 If nothing else, this process has shown me how little I write about the middleware stuff. When trying to re-learn some of the old OAS stuff I went looking for my notes and found virtually nothing. I’ve written even less about WebLogic… 🙁

To make sure I don’t fall into the same trap again I’m going to write a number of articles on pretty basic middleware stuff over the next few weeks. It will clear away some of the cobwebs for me and help the new person get up to speed if their middleware skills are not that great.

Here are some of the “newer” things I’ve written recently…

Cheers

Tim…

Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer.

10 thoughts on “Job Update and New Articles…”

  1. Your perception that the employer expects the DBA to be able to do whatever is needed is not uncommon I think.

  2. Hi.

    For me it’s all about an in depth knowledge of the database. Surrounding technologies are important because they interact with the database, but every minute you spend learning something else, you are not learning something about the database.

    If you want to see the important areas, take a look at the OCP syllabus. This is far from being all you need to know, but it gives you an idea of the areas a DBA needs to focus on.

    Cheers

    Tim…

  3. The Apex Listener is working out really well for me. If you’re exploring middle ware stuff, you might spend a few minutes on this one. I’ve been incredibly frustrated that mod_plsql was essentially dropped with version 10 and beyond. I tried EPG and it was very problematic for me. I’ve been using the Apex Listener 1.4 since July 1st and I’m very pleased. I assume 2.0 will be even better. You do such a good job of exploring and writing, I wanted to mention this to you in case it piqued your interest. I love it when I search a topic and you’re site shows up in google at the top of the list. It represents hope.

  4. Hi.

    Thanks for the complement! 🙂

    At the moment, only one project at this company uses mod_plsql, so it is not high on the list of thing for me to look in to. Although it will be at some point!

    Cheers

    Tim…

  5. I can sympathise with the middleware thing, I have become the weblogic guru here based on having installed it once, and written a wlst script to automate deploying the application.
    Can’t remember where I saw it but the best definition of this I have seen is DBA=Does Basically Anything.

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