Saturday, April 16, 2011

Oracle Career in Pakistan , DBA or Developer?

I routinely receive questions through blog comments and email which go something like this:

I am a student/internee/newbie in Oracle. Should I be a Oracle Developer or DBA? Which certification should I pursue? Any Institute which offers good Oracle education at nominal rates?

Let me answer those questions one by one:

I am a student/internee/newbie in Oracle. Should I be a Oracle Developer or DBA?

Nobody can answer that question except you. Don't look at the market trends or the salaries earned by the Oracle developers or DBAs you know. Look inside you. Analyze yourself.  Do you like programming? Do you like to convert business problems into well-written computer programs? Does SQL, PL/SQL, JAVA fascinates you a lot? If yes then you are a Developer and you should work towards becoming Oracle Developer.

If you are more geared towards trouble shooting, installing, configuring and managing the mission critical systems then you are a DBA and that is your career path.

In addition to above points, there are somethings which must be kept in perspective. Oracle is not just confined to database or SQL, PL/SQL. Oracle covers whole suite of ERP, hundreds of products in middleware, many computer languages including JAVA, operating systems like Oracle Linux and Solaris, many many products in vertical industries, all the hardware of former Sun, and there is that database machine Exadata and I am sure I have missed many things Oracle.

So just confine yourself to Oracle database and Oracle Forms/Reports, explore the oracle.com for Oracle products, and see what matches your aptitude and inclination. There are lots of variations in Oracle development and DBA tools.

Which certification should I pursue?

Certification, well realistically that is good for resume and that is good for getting a job. But don't think for a moment that it will prepare you for the job or would make you technically superior. I would even suggest to forget about the certification earlier in your career. Nobody is going to hand over their critical system having data of organization to you on the basis of a certification. You will be judged by the knowledge you would show during your interview and during initial days of your job.


Any Institute which offers good Oracle education at nominal rates?

NO. Sorry but that is what I have found out so far. And frankly speaking you don't need any course in any of institution. Except if you are attending some course from Oracle University Pakistan as prerequisite for the certification. If you want to learn Oracle, then do this:


  1. Download the software for the product you want to learn.
  2. Download its documentation from otn.oracle.com.
  3. You can also look at Oracle By Example (OBE) on otn.oracle.com.
  4. Follow the docs and start playing with that product.
  5. Join forums at OTN and read the threads.
  6. Read lots of blogs about your Oracle products.
  7. Try getting a job as internee and get hands-on experience. 


Got more questions? Ask in comments. 

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