so i have about a year left before i complete my Bachelors degree in IS. the job that i want after graduating would probably be a DBA but my university only offers one database management course but most of the sql/php i've learned are self taught. I was wondering what type of certificates i would need to qualify for a DBA position after graduating? will a company hire a person w/o any certificate and only a degree?
DBA job requirements?
a certificate (IMO) does not mean a whole lot. it is about knowledge. when you get that phone interview they will ask you a list of questions they think you should know. if you do not know it you will not go any farther.
i have talked so many people with 3 degrees the computer field and yet you look at a page they made and it is total crap.
Although I agree that most important is knowledge I would also say that the harsh reality is that you'll probably find it far harder to get that phone interview without some kind of relevant qualification. If you know specificalyy what you want do when you graduate you may be helpfull to get a more specific qualification. I would however, test the waters first, remember that the guy offering you the job doesn't know that you didn't take a database module as part of your degree so they may just assume it.
If it looks like you're going to need a moew specific qualification then I'd try to find course which is as vendor-neutral as possible. Although it doesn't have any specific to databases I found this article very interesting.
If you are truely serious, I can find out from my dad. He manages a handful of system DBAs and works pretty closely with application DBAs. There's probably other flavors of DBAs, but I'm familiar with those two. You may want to check out which flavor interests you. Once you do, you'll have an easier time figuring out what you need to do to land that kind of job.
Talking about jobs, HIT UP A JOB SITE and search for jobs in YOUR AREA and look for the available DBA positions. Read the ads! Find out what the requirements are. If you want a job in your area, you'll need those requirements. Period.
Also important is to understand what the popular RDBMS in your town is. In Cleveland Ohio, its an Oracle town. In Columbus Ohio, its about 30% Oracle and the rest MS SQL (rough numbers given by my dad). If you're an MS SQL person, you'll have a tough time getting in to an Oracle shop (for example).
For system DBAs, you have GOT to have experience. Example: the database goes down. You get paged at 2am. What do you do? What is your recovery plan? In cases like this, if you don't have the experience, you won't know if you're making the right decision and make the wrong one could really mess things up. Employers are fully aware of this and hire accordingly.
I think there's assciate DBAs and junior DBAs. If you have little or no experience, then this is the position you want to try getting into (I think - this is based off of some old memories).
As for certs, it DEPENDS ON THE PERSON reviewing your resume. My dad, he wants to see experience when he's hiring. He'll look at those with a 4 year degree first, BUT he's willing to also look at those who may have some college but jumped into the industry. He knows those folks will have experience (it'll then be his job to interview them and find out if they're BS-ing or if they know their stuff). But he said in another department in his company, the manager there strictly looks at people with degrees and certs.
Application DBAs are a bit different and I don't have a huge amount of info on them. Although I'm hoping to one day wiggle myself into this line of work.
As a PostgreSQL DBA who's learning Oracle on the job from my coworker, the Oracle DBA, i'd say that what you need to be a DBA is first and foremost the right mindset. Secondly you need to have strong relational theory skills.
I've got a meeting to go to, I'll add more later.
Pages at 2 AM? Oh man...
Originally posted by csn
Pages at 2 AM? Oh man...
Yup. That's what I say. As a sys DBA, my dad's department has a DBA on call 24/7. The pager gets passed around I think each week or something between 3 or so DBAs. Working on the weekends is rather typical as well - its the one time they can make changes to the system without many users online. Its the same at the place where I'm at. A lot of patches get installed on a weekend or over the holidays. One Oracle patch was timed to take 33 hours if it 100% successfully. One guy had to work the 33 hours over Thanksgiving break (that had to suck). You add the fact its salary work and no overtime. Ugh. BUT, if you're good, you can make a pretty good buck doing it.
2:00am? I've got gal friends who call me later at night than that :-)
But seriously. If you want to be a DBA, then you're likely gonna be apprenticing to someone who knows a bit about it. It's interesting how much in common I have with the Oracle DBA here even though my experience is with a wholly different database, the concepts are still the same.
Being a DBA means you have to be aware of many different aspects that affect database performance and reliability. You need to know how your machine will behave should the power be removed in the middle of the day. You need to understand the difference between synchronous and asynchronous replication, and which to use when. You need to be able to look at the first rough draft of a user's table and be able to stop relational problems in their designs.
I'd suggest reading the past postgresql hackers and admin mailing lists to get a feel for the types of problems people find and fix in using a database. Other mailing / discussion lists that revolve around other dbs like Oracle or db2 can be useful.
Lastly, if you've been using MySQL, stop, and start using a database like firebird, postgresql, sapdb or similar, which have more correct behaviour and operation. MySQL teaches bad habits, and now would be the time to stop learning them. Single user versions of both Oracle and DB2 are (or at least once were) available online.
Get good books on database theory and read up... And practice at home.