As Published In January/February 2005

Educating Technologists
By Blair Campbell

Two writers and a bookworm educate peers on Oracle9i development and Oracle 10g automation.

Norbert Debes

Peer Specs Company: Self-employed; Business Technology Consulting (one of Germany's largest IT providers) is a primary client Job Title/Description: DBA, responsible for troubleshooting, PL/SQL development, training, installation, upgrades, and Perl and UNIX scripting Location: Oldenburg, Germany Oracle Credentials: Oracle-certified DBA (Oracle8, Oracle8i, Oracle9i) with nine years of experience using Oracle products

How did you get started in IT? I became interested in computers around 1983, when my cousins were playing games on their Atari machines. I bought a Commodore VC20 with a tape drive—a hard disk was too expensive—and wrote BASIC programs for playing Ping-Pong.

Tell us about the books you've written on Oracle development. The first Oracle-related book I worked on was Oracle9i Datenbankentwicklung (Oracle9i Database Development). The chapters I wrote cover Oracle9i's architecture, tables, indexing, partitioning option, domain indexes, SQL statement optimization, and more. The second book, Oracle9i Kompendium, is about high availability and Oracle Real Application Clusters. I've also written two books on digital photography. So far all my books have been published only in German.

What technology has most changed your life? Steel-edge snowboards! Honestly, my life has been most changed by the people I feel close to, and I try not to be too much of a computer nerd.

Arun Kumar

Peer Specs Company: Cingular Wireless Job Title: Systems architect Location: Dallas, Texas Oracle Credentials: Oracle-certified master DBA (Oracle7) with 10 years of experience using Oracle products

What is your role at Cingular Wireless? My group, Enterprise Data Architecture Services, provides the framework for architecting, designing, and tuning databases and database applications used by Cingular for everything from subscriber activation, billing, and customer service to online and retail sales.

You've just published a new book. What topics does it cover? My book, entitled Easy Oracle 10g Automatic DBA [from Rampant TechPress, 2004], explains how to use the powerful Oracle Database 10g automatic database-administration features. It's written in a very lucid style, helping small businesses as well as novice DBAs fully utilize these features and have a complete ready-to-use Oracle database in less than a day.

What additional advice do you have for those just getting into Web and database development? Web-hosting services and authoring tools have become very simple and cheap, so everyone can afford to make database applications and Web sites. The utility of any Web-based application depends on the data underlying it and its presentation to the user. Once you're familiar with database fundamentals and Web-development techniques, there are no limits on how to use a Web application with integrated database technology.

Ajay Arora

Peer Specs Company: Dataspace, a consulting firm specializing in business intelligence, data warehousing, and data integration Job Title: Principal data-warehouse architect Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan Oracle Credentials: Oracle-certified DBA (Oracle7, Oracle8, Oracle8i, Oracle9i) with more than nine years of experience using Oracle products

If you could change a feature of Oracle Database, what would it be? I'd add more power to Statspack, so it could give suggestions based on database behavior. I'd also add an ON SELECT trigger, so auditing could be done through triggers, and all the actions in the database could be captured.

You're transitioning to Oracle Database 10g. Which features of the new release are you finding most valuable? Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor [ADDM]. It builds on the repository maintained by Automatic Workload Repository. I really like the way ADDM scans the whole system—it's as if your database is going through a thorough physical exam. ADDM diagnoses the problems in the system and suggests the solution. And the best part is, ADDM answers the questions most DBAs ask, such as "What is consuming most of my database time?"

What's your favorite thing to do that doesn't involve work? Learning piano with my daughter, Ragini. My other hobby is reading, and I have nearly 500 technical books scattered in every corner of our house—my wife's worst nightmare.