As a Newbie DBA...

I was browsing through Tom Kyte's blog when I hit on this commenter, and led me to her blog. Her blog is about newbie DBAs (hence the name, Newbie DBA) and came across one of her entries asking people about how to go about learning Oracle the first time. This prompted me to share my experience when I first encountered Oracle, taken the responsibilities of being a newbie Oracle DBA, the very first time in my working life.

I've already had several drafts in my Oracle blog, but was hesitant to publish them because the entries doesn't seem "right" to begin this blog. But after commenting on Lisa's blog, I thought this was a good way to start my Oracle blog, so let me expand on my comment on her site and tell you my experience in detail...

Hi Lisa! I just found your site via Tom Kyte's, and I'm so relieved to learn I'm not the only one who entered the Oracle DBA realm alone 4 years ago. I was sort of pushed into learning Oracle when my company decided it was more "practical" to have a neophyte, SQLServer familiar DB developer to handle the company database instead of retaining the senior Oracle DBA. The previous senior DBA gave me a couple of notes and commands to clone the db and make sure the standby database was running ok (back then I didn't even had any idea what a standby database, or RMAN, is! I was just taught "commands" e.g. run this shell script to create a backup, run that script to make sure standby is in sync). I've been given the chance to ask the senior DBA questions before he left, but at that point in time I didn't even know natch about Oracle to ask any specific questions. Its been hell and back for me, including a couple of instances when the production DB was just locked and frozen.

Best way to learn? Unfortunately, from my disaster circumstances. Once you're faced with disaster situations several times over, you get tired of "unexpected circumstances" and stop treating the DB like a black box. I agree with what you've said, sticking with one concept at a time helps a lot, because learning them all together in one go will actually leave you beffudled and leave you right at the start.

First thing to learn when placed in a neophyte position and left with a working Oracle db? Build the DB server from ground up without any GUI tools. It'll help you familiarize with the barebone basics (create db, tablespace, rollback segment scripts) and have a development/testing site to play around with.

Second thing to learn? Backup and recovery options. This helps when hell freezes over. Once you know how to recover, usually you can rest easy since you're (sort of) still in control when the db crashes or hangs up. You can recover the data which is most likely the lifeblood of the company. At least it won't get you fired ("errr.. Sorry, I seemed to have lost your precious data" company: "We're also sorry, cause we're going to fire you").

Third thing to learn? Find out why the d*mnned DB is so slow! Starting out with the statspack/utl scripts helps a lot. After that, its research, research and more research! (Jonathan Lewis' Practical Oracle8i really helped a lot on this one)

I'm still learning a lot up until now, but things are picking up.

The best way to learn? Learn from Lisa, be curious, inquisitive, and open minded. Test things out little by little from what you know. Reading the documentation will help, but for the neophyte DBA, it might seem a lot to take in and discourage you from moving on. Read snippets on the topic, but don't ever go too far lest you're one of the people who can hold up to this type of reading.

Hopefully, this blog, as well as Lisa's, and countless number of other newbie blogs out there will help you move on to bigger, better things about Oracle.

Don't let the end get out of your sight! ;)