Which path to go to become a database administrator?

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Just relaying my experiences. Your experience may vary! ;) It's all good.

 

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Yeah - the only reason I'm back in England right now is because it was taking too damn long to get a job in the States...

Much lower-tech over here

 

Sorry I meant more along the lines of a vendor neutral cert, I've used mysql a lot and know quite a bit about databases, but not much about views, triggers and stored procedures as I haven't needed them. I just thought that a cert to show I know the basics would help in getting a job involving db's or moving up from basic support into dba.

 

Sorry, I don't know of any. If MySQL has one, it likely deals with MySQL in particular, and it's not very well recognized. Oracle and Microsoft's exams are vendor specific, so that doesn't help in the search for a vendor-neutral SQL cert. I don't think CompTIA is planning to develop a SQL+ exam.

 

Well I think the MS SQL stuff offers the best introduction to DBA as there is a lot of sites around.

Sure there is a lot of mySQL sites around but they area dministrator by Linux geeks that also take on the DBA role - which is a different story.

Also the MS SQL path is cheaper and there is more resources availalbe for self study.

The best initial step would be to do the 70-431 exam for MCTS, after using the relevant MOC, guides, labs, and exam testing software of course.

 

i work as a system admin in a small to med size company we have an oracle db and a sql db i administer them both i have Ltd sql programming skills enough to administer the databases and i also use enterprise manager as it does everything sql does but in a GUI environment. we have a contract in place with the company who provided the database for our needs and upgrades and stuff like that they provide all the complicated scripts so we do not need contract programmers, it is something that requires real world experience as these are normally business critical systems and as a dba you earn your money when they go wrong not when they are chugging along quite happily and it scared the crap out of me the first time it happened to me.
Get yourself in an IT job get some experience then look to specialise as this will have given you a good grounding and learn sql it is something you either have an affintiy for or like me you have to work damn hard at but it is a real sense of acheievement bringing a database back up after 6 hours down 45 people can't work as they need the database and you fix it..

 

Just a quick reply....thanks for all the advice! I never thought its so difficult to become a database administrator. Again to get the foot in IT is so difficult. I have recently applied various entry IT jobs without luck, even though its hard I will keep applying. I have booked myself for the N+ exam and if I pass the next is MCP...thats as far I think I can go.

btw can someone tell me how call centre (non IT) experience is good to have? The reason I am asking is because most 1st line job require some sort of call centre experience now. I think I want to do that in the mean time.

 

Hi again!

It really depends on the helpdesk - some literally are call-loggers, whereas others are far more technical.

As a thought, on seeing your post, have you tried looking around for basic jobs using Access? That'd get you at least into a database environment and development experience, as well as some low-tech DBA experience.