July/August 2017
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How did you get started in IT? Prior to university, I was considering a career in robotics. I went to a university expo, and I met a group of IT students and teachers from the most recognized software engineering school in Mexico. They talked about the possibilities of the technology field, and that was the moment I began to fall in love with IT. Right then and there I changed my mind about robotics, and I ended up enrolling in that university.
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Job title: SOA architect Location: Mexico City, Mexico Oracle credentials: Oracle Service Oriented Architecture Infrastructure 11g Certified Implementation Expert and Oracle Unified Business Process Management 11g Certified Implementation Specialist Length of time using Oracle products: Five years Oracle ACE Associate 
Connect Twitter: @sandyfloresmx LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sandrafloresmx Blog: desarrolloconsoa.blogspot.mx |
What’s your favorite tool on the job? Oracle Service Bus. We normally use it as a communication medium between applications, and it’s continuously improved upon in order to adapt to customer demands. I see it as a pillar for middleware implementation that may ease the developer’s job, as well as quickly delivering value to the customer.
Which new features in Oracle Fusion Middleware are you currently finding most valuable? Inside Oracle SOA Suite 12c there are some very interesting features, such as Oracle Enterprise Scheduler, which makes it easy to use calendars for jobs. Another one that I find very useful as a developer is the XSLT [XSL Transformations] debugger.
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What advice do you have about how to get into database development? Keep learning every day. Look at Oracle blogs for technical tips, and attend the Oracle sessions provided by Oracle user groups in every corner of the world. Attending user group meetings and other such networking events is a great way to learn about the technologies and the people that use and administer them. Learning from colleagues and experts in the field is a very good way to jump-start one’s learning journey.
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Job title: Lead DBA Location: St. Petersburg, Florida Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified Master (Oracle Database 10g) and Oracle Certified Performance Tuning Expert (Oracle Database 11g) Length of time using Oracle products: 15 years Oracle ACE Director 
Connect Facebook: facebook.com/yenugulavenkata.ravikumar Twitter: @yvrk1973 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/yv-ravikumar-ace-director-oracle-certified-master-book-author-a5001314/ Blog: yvrk1973.blogspot.in |
You’ve taken Oracle University [OU] classes in the past. What led you to do this? I wanted to learn in a structured manner in a classroom, and also earn my Oracle Certified Master certification, so I took two courses from OU. I wanted to focus and completely get away from my daily work, in a classroom environment, in order to truly learn. I prefer the classroom, but I do appreciate all of OU’s different training format options—live virtual classes, training on demand, classroom training, and corporate training.
What green practices do you use in your DBA work? In my opinion, IT consolidation and monitoring real-time database performance should now be considered green practices. I strongly recommend server consolidation, replacing older servers with the latest servers for ease of use and less consumption of resources. Oracle Cloud can play a big role in this space, given the fact that it’s faster to deploy, more agile, simpler to run, requires fewer IT skills, and has a lower total cost of ownership.
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How are you using social media in your work these days? I’m active on Twitter and try to blog when time permits, both of which allow me to share my technical knowledge and keep in touch with the Oracle community. When I started speaking at Oracle user group conferences, I already “knew” quite a few people on Twitter, and meeting them in real life was a really fantastic experience. I have some great friendships that began on Twitter. It’s so nice to see how much people want to help each other.
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Job title: Oracle DBA and architect Location: Brussels, Belgium Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified Professional (Oracle Database 10g) Length of time using Oracle products: 16 years Oracle ACE 
Connect Twitter: @pfierens LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/pfierens Blog: pfierens.blogspot.com |
What’s the next big thing driving change in your industry? The DBA role is evolving at a high speed. If all you’re qualified to do is upgrade and install databases and do backup and restore operations, you’ll soon be out of a job, due to the cloud. It’s necessary to invest time learning about aspects of the job that will be needed in the cloud era, such as tuning and security. You’ll need to go beyond GUI performance tuning and DevOps to keep yourself relevant.
What’s your go-to Oracle reference book? I really love Christian Antognini’s book Troubleshooting Oracle Performance [Apress, 2008]. It’s very good for performance tuning. And I still have the first edition of Tom Kyte’s Expert Oracle Database Architecture [Apress, 2005]. It was one of the first Oracle books I bought, and it got me started with Oracle Database and taught me the basics—basics I soon learned some seasoned DBAs had never mastered. It may be “old” in IT terms, but it’s still very relevant.
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