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I've been working with relational database systems for about 4 years, 2 years in Oracle particularly. I've been able to do pretty much everything I've needed so far but I know that the knowledge I have in Oracle is like a drop of water in ocean. I'm sure that I'm not aware of or don't use many features that Oracle has or don't use them properly. To be short, I think my knowledge is not enough for professional database development/administration. So I've decided to learn Oracle real deep. I am interested in getting certificates but not as much as I want to learn it really well. Is there anything that I have to know in advance? I think there're quite a bit of things in Oracle that are the same in all RDBMS's, that is fundamental concepts. Any suggestions on useful course(s) or book(s) would be appreciated.

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closed as off topic by Phil, Martin Smith, Mark Storey-Smith, RolandoMySQLDBA, Max Vernon Apr 8 '13 at 16:15


1 Answer 1

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Read the Oracle Concepts manual from (virtual) cover to (virtual) cover.

The latest version is at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e25789/toc.htm

If you know and understand all of this you'll be in the top 1% of all DBAs.

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This is doubtful. Many concepts aren't that easy to grasp if you're using this guide solely. For example I couldn't get how indexes actually work–although this is what every DBA should understand–based only on Oracle guides until I found one of the posts like this. I believe there are many guides which are far better than Oracle docs at explaining how things actually work–Oracle Core: Essential Internals for DBAs and Developers, to name one. Besides, I think the question is not constructive, and I'd vote to close it. –  Yasir Arsanukaev Apr 8 '13 at 13:09
I'm assuming every computer programmer has an understanding of basic computer science topics. And a DBA is a computer programmer in my books. It's just a more declarative means of programming the computer. As far as an understanding of (B-tree) indexes goes, I find docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e25789/… to be perfectly adequate, but terse. –  Colin 't Hart Apr 8 '13 at 13:31
Yea, but to be in the top 1% of all DBAs you need to go deeper (really deeper!) than just basic understanding. –  Yasir Arsanukaev Apr 8 '13 at 13:35
I maintain that most DBAs don't understand all that's in the Oracle Concepts manual, let alone basic computer science topics such as complexity and algorithms. –  Colin 't Hart Apr 8 '13 at 13:39
As of this past December, Oracle certification (associate dba/dba) required attending the first and second Oracle admin classes (around $3500 each). I recently have had to take on oracle (we purchased an app that only runs on it) and have had more issues to date with the utilities assoicated with it. I read the oracle docs and then subscribe to safari.com for a different perspective. –  jl01 Apr 8 '13 at 13:41
