Talk on a career in the Oracle realm can be heard from everywhere. However, to walk the talk requires a clear strategy else any road can take you anywhere if you are not sure about the goal. Firstly decide the path—do you want to be Oracle Application Developer or an Oracle Database Administrator?

Preparation starter
The choice would be clear if you know the dynamics of each path. It would be wise to collect information regarding both paths and make an informed quality decision.

An application developer gravitates more towards being a business analyst or a software developer. The job profile includes planning and designing a database whose structure meets the users’ current and future needs for data storage and reporting. Application Developers basically develop applications on Oracle. This requires a sound understanding and grasp of SQL, PL/SQL, and the ability to develop Internet applications using Form Builder and Report Builder. If you pride yourself on your logical thinking, attention to detail, ability to focus for long periods, plus gathering and analyzing requirements for coding and testing you are in top form for a career here.

Being a developer is a time consuming process with a wide range of things to learn, like JDeveloper, Developer 2000, Developer6i, and Java/XML applications amongst others. As a developer, you can’t limit yourself to the Oracle user interface (UI) tools because software from other companies like Microsoft and Sun has an edge. It is pertinent to note there are several UI tools up for game like VB, Java, C-Sharp, Visual C++, Microsoft.Net, ASP, and ColdFusion. Hence, a developer has to be ready to learn a lot of other programming languages and tools to keep his job.

On the other hand, a database administrator’s (DBA) job profile is to ensure that data is secure, available, and used productively. This would involve administrative, maintenance, and routine activities such as installing database, user account maintenance, management of backups, performance tuning, and data recovery. This requires good knowledge of the Oracle database architecture. The DBA is responsible for designing and maintaining an organization’s database, and ensuring that data is available only to authorized users. Skills required for DBA specialists are good understanding of the Oracle database, related utilities and tools, and a better understanding of the underlying operating system. A sound knowledge of the physical database design, ability to perform both Oracle and operating system performance tuning, and monitoring are also desirable, as an Oracle developer’s forum site http://forums.oracle.com/forums/index.jspa says. Another website of relevance would be asktom.oracle.com