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Harald van Breederode and Joel Goodman

Insights into the Expansion of the DBA Skill Set

Performing an Oracle DBA 1.0 to DBA 2.0 Upgrade

Introduction
Historically, the Oracle DBA skill set was database-centric, usually limited to software installation, database creation, day-to-day maintenance, performance monitoring, tuning and most of all, backup and recovery. Since the arrival ofOracle 10g, the technology within the DBA arena has changed, due to the increase in automated monitoring, tuning and manageability features within the Oracle kernel, and also expanded into areas that were formerly the responsibility of OS, storage, and network administrators. Due to these changes, the knowledge required by the typical Oracle DBA has increased, requiring additional skills and in somecases job responsibilities. This shift from the traditional DBA, which we call DBA 1.0, toward the modern, post Oracle 9i DBA, which we call DBA 2.0, has occurred gradually over the past two major releases of the Oracle Database Server. We recently discussed this shift in DBA skills as part of our regular collaboration as the founding members of the OU EMEA SME team, as well as in leading theOracle DBA Certification development projects by mentoring the exam developers on the changing skill set that we describe here.

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Performing an Oracle DBA 1.0 to DBA 2.0 Upgrade

Insights into the Expansion of the DBA Skill Set

JOEL

I remember seeing “the writing on the wall” when Oracle 10g Release 1 was in Beta. I looked at the traditional DBA job role and the required skills andthought, “I had better start teaching myself certain concepts and technologies or I will not be able to deliver in the classroom nor lead the certification development team”. How would you characterise the typical DBA that you taught in the days of Oracle 9i and earlier.

Prior to Oracle 10g, most DBA skills were centred purely on the Oracle database server. This included installation, databaseand Oracle network administration, performance monitoring, database tuning, occasional SQL tuning and first and foremost backup and recovery.

HARALD

JOEL

Is that all? I taught RAC, Data Guard, data warehouse database administration, security and various other advanced topics during releases 8.0, 8i and 9i. Surely the DBA skill set was larger than what you claim.

The skill set I refer tois the “core” set of skills that most DBAs required for any job, according to a typical technical job description. The advanced courses you and I both delivered were required for those DBAs who used those specific options, but they were not part of every DBA’s skill set. When I taught these advanced courses, I struggled with delegates who lacked the necessary skills in the OS, Storage and Networkareas precisely because DBAs did not have, nor were they expected to have those skills. I also recall helping you at the start in learning these concepts so that you could teach these skills to course delegates.

HARALD

JOEL

Yes I too recall those early days. I also remember looking at both Oracle 10g release 1 Clusterware and ASM, and thinking “this is easy if you are an OS, Storage orNetwork administrator but how am I going to learn this well enough to teach it?” When did you first realise that DBA 2.0 was an emerging requirement?

I realised this even before Oracle 10g. Some of Oracle 9i technology was moving in this direction with features such as Oracle Cluster Manager and Oracle Cluster File System, both for Windows and Linux, and RAC Guard for Windows. Furthermore, fromthe start of 8.0, RMAN could interface to media managers using the SBT API and the use of “dbstart” and “dbshut” on UNIX systems required some OS knowledge as well. But by 10g it was no longer possible to remain a DBA 1.0. You said so yourself, that you saw things changing.

HARALD

JOEL

Yes I did indeed. But what still causes confusion for some people is the discrepancy between the DBA...