You’ll also need to acquire the necessary operating system knowledge. Most of the large Oracle data base administrators are based on the UNIX (or Linux) operating system, so you’ll need to have a reasonably good understanding of UNIX. Again, you have many sources of information available. You can attend a class or two from the leading UNIX system vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, you can read the manuals, or you can buy some books. Microsoft Windows is another popular operating system for Oracle DBA, so you need to have a basic understanding of the Windows Server operating system as well. As many of the new entrants to the Oracle data base administrator 10g field find out, the Oracle data base administrator world is exhilarating, but alas, it’s also exhaustive in its reach and scope.

It isn’t uncommon for DBAs to have an entire shelf full of books, all explaining various facets of the DBA profession—modeling books, UNIX texts, DBA handbooks, backup and recovery guides, performance-tuning manuals, and networking and troubleshooting books. The amazing thing is, even after you run through the whole gauntlet of courses and books; you aren’t really assured of being fully prepared to handle complex, day-to-day DBA administration chores. There are many, many people who have taken all the requisite classes to become an Oracle DBA who won’t or can’t be competent Oracle data base administrators based solely on their training. Refer back to that quotation from Shakespeare at the beginning of this introduction: You need to separate the grain from the chaff, and all the coursework and manuals, while excellent in their content, can serve to muddy the waters further. The experienced Oracle data base administrator can find his or her way through this baffling amount of material, but how’s the neophyte DBA to cope with the overwhelming amount of information? That’s where this book comes in.