SEO

No, I am not a headhunter offering jobs :-)

I'd like to ask a question and I'm addressing it especially to those who
hire people to work with DB2 and those who work with those new hires:

What knowledge, skills and techniques would you want a new hire to have if
they were going to be put in a role involving DB2? I'm thinking of roles
like DBA or similar positions involving administration of a DBA system.

Or, to put it a different way, what do you feel schools and education
programs for DB2 need to cover to prepare a person to work comfortably with
DB2?

I'm really not sure what level of theory and hands-on companies are
expecting these days in new hires, especially mature people who are
repositioning after careers in other parts of IT or even outside of IT
altogether.

I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has an opinion on this
question. The more detail you are prepared to offer, the better.

I am involved in the design of education for mature students so I am trying
to figure out how best to prepare them for working with DB2.

--

Rhino

"rhino" <No.offline.contact.please@anonymous.com> wrote in message
news:fjo0fu$uqn$1@news.datemas.de...
> No, I am not a headhunter offering jobs :-)
>
> I'd like to ask a question and I'm addressing it especially to those who
> hire people to work with DB2 and those who work with those new hires:
>
> What knowledge, skills and techniques would you want a new hire to have if
> they were going to be put in a role involving DB2? I'm thinking of roles
> like DBA or similar positions involving administration of a DBA system.
>
> Or, to put it a different way, what do you feel schools and education
> programs for DB2 need to cover to prepare a person to work comfortably
> with DB2?
>
> I'm really not sure what level of theory and hands-on companies are
> expecting these days in new hires, especially mature people who are
> repositioning after careers in other parts of IT or even outside of IT
> altogether.
>
> I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has an opinion on this
> question. The more detail you are prepared to offer, the better.
>
> I am involved in the design of education for mature students so I am
> trying to figure out how best to prepare them for working with DB2.
> Rhino

Theory is nice, but hands on experience is crucial. Go through the command
reference manual and make sure they practice most of the important commands.

A decent knowledge of OS's is also important (Linux/UNIX). The other thing
that is very nice if you work in a development environment is a very good
knowledge of SQL and the ability to help developers. I find this to be an
appalling omission in many DBA's these days.

I look for support experience (operational or development), sql
tuning skills, problem solving skills, communication skills, and multi
vendor experience (IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Open source).

On Dec 12, 12:52 am, "rhino" <No.offline.contact.ple...@anonymous.com>
wrote:
> No, I am not a headhunter offering jobs :-)
>
> I'd like to ask a question and I'm addressing it especially to those who
> hire people to work with DB2 and those who work with those new hires:
>
> What knowledge, skills and techniques would you want a new hire to have if
> they were going to be put in a role involving DB2? I'm thinking of roles
> like DBA or similar positions involving administration of a DBA system.
>
> Or, to put it a different way, what do you feel schools and education
> programs for DB2 need to cover to prepare a person to work comfortably with
> DB2?
>
> I'm really not sure what level of theory and hands-on companies are
> expecting these days in new hires, especially mature people who are
> repositioning after careers in other parts of IT or even outside of IT
> altogether.
>
> I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has an opinion on this
> question. The more detail you are prepared to offer, the better.
>
> I am involved in the design of education for mature students so I am trying
> to figure out how best to prepare them for working with DB2.
>
> --
>
> Rhino

It is difficult to find a DB2 production support DBA role without any
prior experience. IBM certification for DB2 database administration
augments your credentials but can not be substitute for years of
experience. I know Adabas DBAs who weren't allowed to work on
production systems till they had 5-7 years of experience. The easiest
first step towards a DB2 DBA career is to start as a developer or Dev
DBA or Project DBA as some call it. Your work would involve writing
stored procedures, UDFs, writing and rewriting dynamic SQL, SQL
tuning, writing shell and Perl scripts etc. Strong knowledge of SQL,
DB2 SQL PL, shell and/or Perl scripting and a general working
knowledge of Unix systems would be required.

As you continue to work as a Dev DBA, you would find opportunities to
get involved in production support work and in time would find
yourself independently responsible for production systems. As you
progress towards this path, you would need to understand basics of OS
administration, storage and network systems, proprietary backup/
storage servers (TSM/Veritas/EMC), application servers, specific
administration needs of packaged applications (SAP, PeopleSoft,
Siebel, Bussiness Objects etc) and so on.

Due to shortage of human resource with required skills, some companies
assign production support roles to people with some training and
almost no experience.

Regardless of whether you are a seasoned expert or a newbie, the most
important resource for DB2 is the Information Center. Other
educational resources like the DeveloperWorks library of Redbooks and
articles, books, this usenet group, IDUG DB2-L list, various blogs
(planet DB2) and in general, people willing to help would be help you
understand the systems and complete the tasks. Of the very few
databases that I have worked with, I have found DB2 educational
resources and community support the best.

The age old saying of - "a well-read DBA is a good DBA", still holds
good.

Wishing you and your students all the best towards a challenging,
exciting and rewarding career as a DB2 DBA,
Sanjuro

> I would be delighted to hear from anyone who has an opinion on this
> question. The more detail you are prepared to offer, the better.

> I am involved in the design of education for mature students so I am trying
> to figure out how best to prepare them for working with DB2.

Hi,
I come from "AS/400" world: DB2 is "inside" the operating systems and
they usually say that OS/400 doesn't need database administrator...
....but, when it comes to sql, if you want your queries to run faster
(and all your server to run faster), you need indexing strategies and
work management: tuning ;-)
I've arrived to db tuning and work management from rpg programming and
after many years:
every day I need to (and I'm glad to) learn something new :-)

Imvho you could try to teach your students that - even if a strong
knowledge of DB2 (or programming languages or operating system) is very
important - it's important to "see" all the environment (including
people - and "users") you work with.
And prepare them to go on studying as long as they will work: after all
this may be one of the more interesting point of this type of work ;-)


> Rhino

My two "AS/400" cents :-)
Stefano P.

--
"Niuna impresa, per minima che sia,
può avere cominciamento e fine senza queste tre cose:
e cioè senza sapere, senza potere, senza con amor volere"
[Anonimo fiorentino, XIV sec.]

(togliere le "pinzillacchere" dall'indirizzo email ;-)