Motivate Yourself as DBA

[tekpr00]

Hello All,

I am just looking for inputs from fellow DBAs on this site for constant ways to motivate myself as a DBA.

I am basically an operational DBA, I support the developers on database issues. Our shop is not very big and I am the only full time DBA in the shop. Though we have 2 other people to that work part time in our group. Apart from the daily database routine work, we occasionaly have small projects to work on. But this small projects are far in between.

Being the only full time DBA on in the group, I am looking for suggestions from you guys in 2 parts.

1) To stay motivated and do my current job in a way that will add values to the team.

2) To provide leadership, by way of actions, to the other DBA's working part time on the project.

I will be looking forward to your inputs.

Please note that no inputs is too small or too big.

Thanks, my normal routine lately have been checking the following:
VERIFY ALL INSTANCES ARE UP
LOOK FOR ANY NEW ALERT LOG ENTRIES
VERIFY DBSNMP IS RUNNING
VERIFY SUCCESS OF DATABASE BACKUP
VERIFY SUCCESS OF DATABASE ARCHIVING TO TAPE
VERIFY ENOUGH RESOURCES FOR ACCEPTABLE PERFORMANCE

 

[dbtoo2001]

I would suggest the following:

automate the list that you gave of normal routine, email yourself the results (if you don't do that already.)

if your company doesn't have a 'play machine', insist on one, and start practicing - standby databases, scenarios for failures, rman, etc.

join OTN, techtips, and other forums and see how many posts you can answer (whether or not you actually post it, it's in the challenge of understanding the questions and answers.) you also improve knowledge by learning from the various leaders who paticipate on those forums (like a santamufasa and others (sorry guys, it's been a while since I've been on this site - I don't know all the names on the leader board!)

 

[Thargy]

tekpro,

one notable omission from you list is that you are not routinely verifying your ability to restore. All the back ups in the world are useless if they cannot be used to successfully restore a trashed db.

Also, write automation tools to increase your own efficiency, that way you should end up with less and less routine drivel to do, and be able to concentrate on adding value to your employer's systems, by looking into new practices, features of Oracle, and investigating known trouble spots in existing systems.

Regards

T