DBA Requirements

[rhino]

No, I am not a headhunter offering jobs :-)

I'd like to ask a question and I'm addressing it especially to those who
hire people to work with DB2 and those who work with those new hires:

What knowledge, skills and techniques would you want a new hire to have if
they were going to be put in a role involving DB2? I'm thinking of roles
like DBA or similar positions involving administration of a DBA system.

Or, to put it a different way, what do you feel schools and education
programs for DB2 need to cover to prepare a person to work comfortably with
DB2?

I'm really not sure what level of theory and hands-on companies are
expecting these days in new hires, especially mature people who are
repositioning after careers in other parts of IT or even outside of IT
altogether.

I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has an opinion on this
question. The more detail you are prepared to offer, the better.

I am involved in the design of education for mature students so I am trying
to figure out how best to prepare them for working with DB2.

--

Rhino

[Mark A]

"rhino" <No***********************@anonymous.comwrote in message
news:fj**********@news.datemas.de...

No, I am not a headhunter offering jobs :-)

I'd like to ask a question and I'm addressing it especially to those who
hire people to work with DB2 and those who work with those new hires:

What knowledge, skills and techniques would you want a new hire to have if
they were going to be put in a role involving DB2? I'm thinking of roles
like DBA or similar positions involving administration of a DBA system.

Or, to put it a different way, what do you feel schools and education
programs for DB2 need to cover to prepare a person to work comfortably
with DB2?

I'm really not sure what level of theory and hands-on companies are
expecting these days in new hires, especially mature people who are
repositioning after careers in other parts of IT or even outside of IT
altogether.

I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has an opinion on this
question. The more detail you are prepared to offer, the better.

I am involved in the design of education for mature students so I am
trying to figure out how best to prepare them for working with DB2.
Rhino

Theory is nice, but hands on experience is crucial. Go through the command
reference manual and make sure they practice most of the important commands.

A decent knowledge of OS's is also important (Linux/UNIX). The other thing
that is very nice if you work in a development environment is a very good
knowledge of SQL and the ability to help developers. I find this to be an
appalling omission in many DBA's these days.

[dunleav1]

I look for support experience (operational or development), sql
tuning skills, problem solving skills, communication skills, and multi
vendor experience (IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Open source).

[Stefano P.]

I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has an opinion on this

question. The more detail you are prepared to offer, the better.

I am involved in the design of education for mature students so I am trying
to figure out how best to prepare them for working with DB2.

Hi,
I come from "AS/400" world: DB2 is "inside" the operating systems and
they usually say that OS/400 doesn't need database administrator...
....but, when it comes to sql, if you want your queries to run faster
(and all your server to run faster), you need indexing strategies and
work management: tuning ;-)
I've arrived to db tuning and work management from rpg programming and
after many years:
every day I need to (and I'm glad to) learn something new :-)

Imvho you could try to teach your students that - even if a strong
knowledge of DB2 (or programming languages or operating system) is very
important - it's important to "see" all the environment (including
people - and "users") you work with.
And prepare them to go on studying as long as they will work: after all
this may be one of the more interesting point of this type of work ;-)

Rhino

My two "AS/400" cents :-)
Stefano P.

--
"Niuna impresa, per minima che sia,
può avere cominciamento e fine senza queste tre cose:
e cioè senza sapere, senza potere, senza con amor volere"
[Anonimo fiorentino, XIV sec.]

(togliere le "pinzillacchere" dall'indirizzo email ;-)