Introduction

Why am I Learning Oracle?
This trend continued in my third and current job, and these days I do little direct development in PL/SQL. More of my time is spent understanding the way that our production code (PL/SQL and Java) interacts with out database and vice-versa. In so far as possible, I also stay away from backup/restore, OS-level concerns, hardware and security. I’m not a DBA and I’m not really a developer anymore. I have some responsibility for the data model, some responsibility for the development DBs, some for releases and some for the future shape and capacity of our systems. I’ve taken to calling myself a development DBA, but I don’t consider myself to have the level of knowledge in some areas required to do that.

So to do my job better, in between reading books on data modelling or derivatives, I’ve decided to learn what I can of the guts of Oracle.

Why Blog It?
I’ve known for a while that explaining something is a good way to ensure that I understand it myself. It might help a few other people as well. It keeps me honest about whether or not I’m continuing to learn, and it’s great to be able to look up your own summary of something when you need a refresher.

About Me
I’ve worked for a financial information company since 2006, in an evolving role I would describe as “development DBA” – see above for clarification.I’ve been a PL/SQL developer since 2002, and at first I thought PL/SQL was just a poor relation to C, Java, or another proper language.