Author: jczuprynski

In my last three decades in Information Technology, I’ve often been asked to perform deep technical interviews with candidates for open positions. I’ve discovered a rather unnerving trend that’s begun to accelerate over the last five years: a significant uptick in the number of candidate Oracle DBAs who apparently see nothing wrong with exaggerating their experience in a particular technology. Some recent and particularly disturbing examples:

• An interviewee whose CV claimed she had significant experience with Oracle Database Real Application Clusters couldn’t explain to me what would happen to the database instance on a node if I accidentally terminated a crucial background process. (She insisted that I’d have to restart the instance manually.)
• Another interviewee was unable to explain why ASM was elemental to the efficient operation of storage cells on an Exadata Database Machine … even though his resume claimed he had almost seven years of deep Exadata experience.
• A third interviewee’s CV claimed deep understanding of Oracle Data Guard technology … but he couldn’t explain why Data Guard Broker would be of particular value, especially when managing a switchover operation.

Based on informal discussions with my students when I taught classes for Oracle University, these were actually rather tame experiences, as these candidates had merely exaggerated their skills. I’ve heard numerous anecdotes about Oracle DBA candidates with excellent resumes and stellar technical interview results that were hired as full-time employees. By then it was too late to discover that they didn’t know how to diagnose simple application performance issues, perform basic database backup and recovery tasks, or even explain the simplest concepts of how an Oracle database actually works.

I’ve often said that the profession of Oracle DBA is much like that of a surgeon or airline pilot because if we make a serious mistake, production data could be lost or corrupted, and that could mean that someone’s health – or even someone’s life – could be at stake. But that’s where the comparison also ends: A phony or incompetent airline pilot is usually detected fairly quickly and fired, and incompetent surgeons lose their status with their state board of review, and are prohibited from practicing medicine, but an incompetent DBA is often simply demoted to lesser duties, or in rare cases terminated … and usually continues to work somewhere else without any disciplinary action being taken.

If you’ve recently encountered similar experiences, please send them to me using the form below with as much detail as possible. I’d like to know if I’m alone in these observations, or if other Oracle DBA professionals have seen a similar uptick. If it turns out that this is a real epidemic, I have some ideas on how to stem its tide as well.

If you’ve heard about Attribute Clustering and Zone Mapping – two brand-new features in Oracle Database Release 12.1.0.2 – then be sure to check out my latest IOUG SELECT Journal Q4 2015 Article, which does a deep dive on these features. And if you aren’t a member of IOUG, feel free to check out a complimentary PDF version of this article. I’m looking forward to your interested feedback!

Have a happy holiday season, and here’s to an exhilarating 2016.

Just a quick note that my latest IOUG SELECT Journal article on 12c R1 features – an essential read, especially if you’re contemplating experiments with In-Memory Column Store features –  is available on IOUG’s web site. In honor of Oracle OpenWorld 2015, IOUG has made the entire 2015 Q3 SELECT Journal available publicly, so grab a taste of their delicious new online format and prepare for you adventures in IMCS! Happy Computing, my colleagues.

If you’d like to learn more about what I believe are some of the most important features and capabilities of Oracle Database 12c, please be sure to check out new Oracle Database 12c video training series that’s now available from Pearson LiveLessons.

And my colleagues at InformIT have also just announced a special offer: You can save 20% off the normal retail price of $299 and get the entire series – six individual lessons, over four hours of training, complete with detailed code examples of how these new features actually work – for only $239.

So if you’re heading down an implementation path for Oracle 12c in the immediate future, don’t miss out on this deal! Just click on the LiveLessons icon above begin your 12c journey.

I’ll be presenting at the upcoming July 2015 meeting of the Chicago Oracle Users Group (COUG). We’ll be meeting on July 23rd from 6PM – 8PM at a brand-new venue – the Seasons 52 restaurant in Schaumburg, IL. As usual, space is limited, so be sure to register soon to guarantee a seat.

My esteemed colleague Biju Thomas will be kicking off our meeting with a discussion of Oracle Database features entitled The Rest of the Database 12c Features for an 11g DBA. Then I’ll be presenting Just SQL Often Needed: Leveraging JSON Features in Oracle Database 12.1.0.2. This brand-new topic is a first foray into some of the unique ways to leverage data stored as JavaScript Object Notation – an increasingly popular data interchange format used by NoSQL databases as well as all sorts of devices that participate in the Internet of Things (IoT) – within Oracle 12cR1.

I’ll also be bringing some copies of my new Oracle Press book for our usual post-presentation raffle. Since I’ll be sticking around for some after-meeting comraderie, I’ll be happy to sign your prize. So don’t miss this meeting! I hope to see you there.

If you have colleagues in Japan who are within easy travel distance of Tokyo’s Akihabara district, please let them know that I will be there during the week of June 8, 2015 to speak at the 2015 DB Tech Showcase.

I’ll be presenting on June 10th on the new In-Memory features of Oracle Database 12.1.0.2, and then on June 11th I’ll be explaining how Oracle Database 12c’s new histograms can make a difference in better query performance.

This is my first-ever trip to Japan, so  I am honored and humbled by the opportunity to present to my Oracle colleagues half a world away. I am looking forward to a cultural immersion experience like none other. I hope to see you there to wish you konnichi-wa at my sessions!

If you are in the midst of migrating, transforming, or upgrading your existing database from Oracle 10g or 11g to Oracle 12c and you’re searching for exactly the right techniques to leverage during your project, please do check out our new book – it’s designed to help you think creatively about the method(s) you can leverage most effectively for your project.

I just received a few copies of our book – my very first Oracle Press publication  – and I must admit that there is nothing more humbling than seeing one’s name in print for the very first time. I want to thank my co-author Ed Whalen for his patience while I learned the ropes of publishing, and my hat is off to my colleagues – especially Hans Forbich, our valiant technical editor, and our Oracle Press editors Wendy Rinaldi and Janet Walden – for all their assistance over the past year. It has been a most interesting endeavor!

NOTE: Our book officially launches on June 5, 2015 but I wanted to give you all advance notice of its publication. You can decide to pre-order it here if you’d like to get an advance copy. It will be available in e-Book format as well.

If you’ve wanted to upgrade your knowledge on Oracle Database 12c to include some of the neatest new features of release 12.1.0.2, you’ve probably priced out the cost of the Oracle University five-day Database 12c New Features course and suffered extreme sticker shock … especially if it’s been a while since you took an OU class.

But if you’re just trying to get your head around some of the most beneficial features of 12c Database – especially the new In-Memory Column Store features! – I’m happy to announce an excellent introduction into these features and many others, including Attribute Clustering and Zone Mapping, advanced partitioning operations, partial partitioned indexes, automatic SQL tuning, and many more. Pearson is offering a sneak peak at my new six-part video series, Oracle 12c New Features Part 1 LiveLessons, via Safari Books Online.

And if you are already a Safari Books Online subscriber, you can get a free preview of the full course right now! Just use this link to dive into the introduction to the online course. (If you’re not already a Safari subscriber, you’ll only be able to view the first 30 seconds or so of each lesson.)

Please let me (and, of course, the folks at Pearson) know what you think! I’d be thrilled to hear your feedback.

Full disclosure: I have also taught Oracle University classes to over 2000 DBAs since 2005. The 12c New Features course is excellent, especially when you have had the benefit of me as your instructor (at least based on the grades you’ve given me over the years). If you are planning to take the 12c OCP Upgrade test, I highly recommend it, especially in concert with one of Oracle’s approved certification exam simulators.

I’ve posted a copy of my latest article that was posted just earlier this week in IOUG SELECT Journal to my Articles page. This article – the second in a series on the new In-Memory Column Store (IMCS) features of Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 – completes my investigations into some of the incredible power and flexibility of this new feature set. Consume freely, my colleagues!

Just a quick note to everyone at Hotsos Symposium 2015: My latest IOUG SELECT Journal article is now available on the Articles page of this blog. It contains most of the code samples that I used for my presentation earlier today at Hotsos. My most sincere thanks for all of you that came to see my presentation on Oracle Database 12.1.0.2’s new In-Memory features!