Oracle Application Performance Tuning

Question

Hello all,
Please forgive me if I am asking this in the wrong section.
I am a s/w engineer with 2 years of exp. I have been working as a performance tuning resource for Oracle EBS in my company. The work mostly involved SQL tuning and dealing with indexes etc. In this time I took up interest in DBA stuff and I completed my OCA in Oracle 10g. Now my comany is giving me an oppurtunity to move into an Application DBA team and I am totally confused about it.
Becoming an Apps DBA will mean that the effort I put into the certification in 10g will be of no use. There are other papers for Apps DBA certification. Should I stay put in performance tuning & wait for a Core DBA chance or shall I accept the Apps DBA oppurtunity.
Also, does my exp. in SQL performace tuning hold any value as such with out an exposure to DBA activities?
Kindly guide me in this regards as I am very confused at this juncture.
Regards,
Jithin

Answer 1

Jithin wrote:
Hello bigdelboy , Thank you for your reply.
Yes, By oracle Apps DBA I meant Oracle EBS.
Clearing 1Z0-046 is an option. However, my doubt is will clearing both the exams Admin I and Admin II be of any help without having practical expericnce? The EBS DBA work involves support and patching, cloning, and new node setup etc.
Also, is my performance tuning experience going to help me in any way in the journey forward as a DBA/ EBS DBA?
Thank you for your valuable time.
Regards,
Jithin SarathThe way I read it is this.
People notice you are capable of understanding and performance tuning SQL. And you must have some knowledge of Oracle EBS. And in fact you also have a DBA OCA.
So there is a 98% + chance you can be made into a good Oracle Apps DBA (and core DBA). If I was in their position I'd want you on my team too; this is the way we used to bring on DBA's in the old days before certification and it has a lot of merit still. Okay you can only do limited tasks at first ... but the number of taks you can do will increase dramatically over a number of months.
I would imagine the Oracle Apps DBA will be delighted to have someone on board who can performance tune SQL which sometimes can sometimes seem more like an art than a science. The patching etc can be taught in small doses. If they are a good team they wont try to give you everything at once, they'll get you to learn one procedure at a time.
And remember, if in doubt ask; and if you dont understand ask again. And be safe rather than sorry on actions that could be critial.
If your worried about liinux: Linux Recipes For Oracle Dbas (Apress) might be a good book to read but could be expensive in India
Likewise: (Oracle Applications Dba Field Guide) may suit and even (Rman Recipes For Oracle Database 11 G: A Problem-solution Approach) may have some value if you need to get up to speed quickly in those areas.
These are not perfect but they sometimes consolidate the information neatly; however only buy if you feel they are cheap enough. You may well buy them and feel disappointed (These all happen to be by Apress who seem to have produced a number of good books ... they've also published some rubbish as well)
And go over the 2-day dba examples as well and linux install examples n OTN as well ... they are free compared to the books I mentioned.
Rgds -bigdelboy.