So many Oracle database administrators are having the same question in different forums and blogs. Of course, after spending too many years in the database engineering platforms and spending too much money for obtaining certification, this type of fear always comes into mind.
I don’t think so. If you can check older versions to newer versions of the Oracle database, you can get the idea that responsibilities and work change but the importance of DBA never lose.
In Oracle 7 and Oracle 8, there was server manager utility existed. You need to perform every database administrator task using server manager utility including tablespace management, startup and shutdown, backup, and recovery.
Oracle 8i introduced internet and java option in the database. Server manager utility discontinued and you got strong SQL*Plus. Database administration tasks were performed by DBA using SQL*Plus. Java virtual machine was available in Oracle 8i and you got one more performance monitoring utility called PERFSTAT. DBA tasks changed but the role was the same.
In Oracle 9i, there is one more feature introduced called Real Application Cluster. Actually, this feature was available in the past version with the name Parallel Server. But Oracle introduced application-level clustering in Oracle 9i. In RAC there were lots of new featured added.
Oracle introduced Oracle 10g with a grid option. There were lots of automation features introduced in 10g. Rumor of DBA role would be discontinued again rose in the global market. Database engineers feared due to this reason. I published an article for this rumor at that time. Oracle also introduced Automatic Storage Management in this version called ASM. DBA got new responsibility for managing storage. Lots of new features of automation like statistics gathers Automatic Shared Memory Management, Automatic Workload Repository, and Automatic Diagnostic Monitor, etc available in this version. What happened with Oracle’s DBA role? Does it discount?
After this version, Oracle launched a new version called Oracle 11g with again grid feature. All automation features were available like Oracle 10g. People feared cutting out their DBA role and losing jobs. I tried to guide so many students that it is not possible to lose control of their significant participation in the company. Oracle never thinks about this because if you check Oracle takes very good business in Oracle DBA certification and education too. Why does Oracle try to lose its business? It never happens.
Oracle introduced the Oracle 12c database with the main feature of CLOUD. There are so many more new featured added in this version.
Oracle also introduces Database As A Service called DBaaS and Oracle 18c with lots of automation features. Upgrade, patching, tuning, backup is now becoming automated and there is no manual task involved. Now let us explain about upgrade and patching, do you think without applying on the test database server and proper application testing we can apply patch or patchset to our production database server? How is it possible? Without testing applications, it doesn’t possible. Even though we cannot apply security patches to our production database server without testing. As database engineers, we know the impacts of this task. So many issues are being generated by patch or patchset on the database server. We need to apply first on the test database and after that, we can test all applications. So many times we have been getting ORA-00600 or ORA-07445 during upgrade or patching tasks.
Now we can take the example of Tuning, lots of DBA will aware of ADDM and AWR. Both features were introduced in Oracle 10g and existed in Oracle 11g and Oracle 12c. We checked so many ADDM reports and AWR reports. Does ADDM report perfect to tune database? ADDM report itself contains so many recommendations. Changes in all parameters as per all recommendations are not acceptable. Human interaction always requires the analysis of this report and performance tuning tasks. There are so many bugs in AWR and ADDM deployments too. Therefore, without human collaboration, it is not possible.
Automation of backup and recovery is somewhere accepted because we perform these tasks using our scheduled scripts using RMAN or manual tasks. But here is also monitoring is a basic requirement. Sometimes backup failed then we need to investigate the root cause of failure and re-execute again. For investigating issue sometimes we lose time and pick hours operations starts. In this condition, we need to wait to finish the pick hours load of the database and in the off pick hour, we can re-execute backup.
These all scenarios are showing that Oracle DBA tasks never be discontinued anytime even though in DBaaS, Oracle Cloud, Oracle 18c Cloud, or the next version of Oracle 12c. Of course, some of the responsibilities will change and they must change because new features will be added.
When you want to make a strong Oracle DBA career then you should be aware of database services and other database technology. Without having knowledge of Oracle internals, Oracle performance tuning, and skill of Oracle database troubleshooting you can’t be an Oracle DBA expert. This expert DBA Team club blog always provides you latest technology news and database news to keep yourself up to date. You should need to be aware of Cloud database technology like DBaaS. These all Oracle DBA tips are available in a single unique resource at our orageek. Meanwhile, we are also providing some sql tutorials for Oracle DBA. This is the part of Dbametrix Group and you would enjoy more advanced topics from our partner resource.
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