oracle大师的点拨分享

突然想起前段时间和美国一个oracle大师的邮件交流，感觉受益匪浅，大师还是很热心的，为了保护隐私，只说他是oaktable的会员，很有经验而且谦逊的一个人。
交流的邮件如下，希望大家也能收到一些感悟。对自己的学习都能有所帮助。
Jianrong,

I will try to answer your questions with my responses in red italicized typeface, below...

1. I was a Java developer before and transfer to DBA around 3 years,as  ORACLE is mainly developed by C,I have learnt part DSI,and want to know more details about it,I wonder if it is better if I make some time to learn c(I learnt c in university,but seems flushed my memory for that ),then I am confused.

• Personally, I was a "C" programmer long before I came to the world of Oracle, and my first few years with Oracle was as a systems and application developer mostly using PRO*C, OCI, PL/SQL, and shell-scripting.  Programming in "C" certainly helped when performing deep diagnosis of Oracle problems later on as a DBA.  However, over the past 10-15 years, I have found that the deep diagnosis using tools related to "C" are no longer useful.  Instead, utilities such as "strace" or "truss" (depending on OS) and "dtrace" and Oracle events have been much more useful.  I would suggest following Tanel Poder's blog in particular for information on using most of these utilities.
  

I got OCP certificate for years ,but sometimes in real work, I found there are many things related(for example, for better understanding performance of ORACLE, I need to get more about storage knowledge to tuning IO, to get more professional knowledge about operating system to tuning in system level, or sometimes need to know more about network and tuning it), for this area, I think I am a new hand, and have limited knowledge about it, this is out of my scope to handle, I wonder if learn more about linux kernel is better? and for better understanding about OS, I plan to get certificate for RHCE to enhanced , and I am not sure whether it really works for me.

• Following what I said above, about how "C" knowledge is no longer so helpful, I agree completely that deep knowledge or UNIX/Linux systems administration and storage administration is probably the most useful experience for Oracle DBAs.  Your ideas to obtain RHCE (or similar) certification is likely to help you a great deal as an Oracle DBA.  And, if instead you find a job as a Red Hat systems administrator, you will be one of very few with knowledge as an Oracle DBA, so it works both ways.
  

There are SQL and PL/SQL enginee in ORACLE, and can u help to provide some documents related, I have limited channels to get this kind of knowledge.

• I use the standard online documentation on the Oracle website exclusively for SQL and PL/SQL help.  Occasionally, I will check Tim Hall's blog at "http://www.oracle-base.com" or other Oak Table members websites.  I also find Kellyn Pot'vin's blog at "http://www.dbakevlar.com" useful as well.

As now big data is very popular, how do u think about it? is it will be a big challenge for Database?

• I believe that Oracle is waiting for a clear winner among the "big data" frameworks, and then it will integrate that winning technology into the Oracle Database product.  So, the fact that Oracle has not yet purchased Cloudera or Couchbase or one of the others indicates that they do not yet see a technology that will clearly win out over the others.
  

I am learning ORACLE and I want to learn other Databases knowlege(mysql,DB2,Sybase,mongDB....) do u have suggestions?  Above questions may be make you confused and that is from my thinking, and I am also puzzled about it. wish to get your comments.:)

• I only know PostgreSQL in addition to Oracle, but I know many DBAs who work on Oracle, MySQL, DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server, and since many companies use more than one database product, this multi-platform skill-set is very valuable.  I would suggest mastering Oracle first, but be open to learning at least one other database product, if not several.