As Published In November/December 2005

Tricks of the Trade
By Blair Campbell

Three peers on the benefits of Oracle 10g, PHP, and thinking like a database

Pavel Descoteaux

Peer Specs Company: Amcor PET Packaging, a leading global packaging company focused on providing PET (polyethylene terephthalate) packaging solutions to the consumer products industry Job Title/Description: Lead systems administrator/senior database administrator, responsible for 30-plus high-availability Oracle databases throughout the U.S. and Canada Location: Tumwater, Washington Length of Time Using Oracle Products: 11 years

How did you get started in IT? During college I worked in the Radiology department of a major hospital that had just implemented a new order-entry software solution. The application was being customized, and this gave me the opportunity to interface with the software developers. By taking an interest, I discovered my passion for technology and was later offered a position in the Information Systems department.

Tell us about your favorite new features in Oracle Database 10g. Recovery, performance, and high availability are critical to me. With Oracle Database 10g's Flashback and Data Pump features and Oracle Enterprise Manager, those criteria are definitely met. What makes Oracle Database 10g most appealing, though, is that it's truly an enterprise solution. It offers the businesses strengths of providing favorable total cost of ownership and return on investment.

Do you have a favorite vacation spot? I really enjoy helping my brother and his family during harvest every year at their farm here in Washington State.

Arno van der Kolk
If you could add a feature to Oracle Database, what would it be? Perhaps being able to implement stored procedures in any given programming language.

Peer Specs Company: DE REE archiefsystemen, a manufacturer of software for historical archiving institutes Job Title/Description: Programmer, responsible for a Java client created with Oracle JDeveloper Release 9.0.3.3 and an Oracle database with PL/SQL stored procedures Location: Groningen, The Netherlands Length of Time Using Oracle Products: Three years Oracle ACE

PL/SQL is, of course, supported, in addition to C and Java, but it would be great if any programming language were supported (for example, the open source scripting language PHP).

What's your favorite tool or technique on the job? It's not really a "tool," per se, but I definitely like what the people at the Apache Foundation are doing. They've published a great number of useful libraries that I use from time to time in my daily work.

What advice do you have about how to get into Web and database development? My advice is to start with something simple such as PHP. It conveys the principles of Web-based programming quite nicely, and it's pretty easy to learn. Then, when you combine those principles with any previous Java experience, you might want to try JavaServer Pages first and maybe some Servlets. After that, there's a whole world of other Web-based Java techniques available.

Ilya Petrenko
In your many years of Oracle experience, what's the most important thing you've learned? Because database programming isn't really algorithmic programming,

Peer Specs Company: ICT GROUP, an international telemarketing company Job Title/Description: Senior Oracle DBA, responsible for administration, tuning, database and applications optimization, security and auditing, backup and high-availability strategies, troubleshooting, and supporting developers Location: Newtown, Pennsylvania Oracle Credentials: Oracle-certified DBA (Oracle7, Oracle8, Oracle8i, Oracle9i) with 12 years of experience using Oracle products

you have to think differently—you have to think like an Oracle database. That thinking helped me understand how to optimize applications and databases based on the physical distribution of the data as well as the business perspective and client-specific requirements.

What technology has most changed your life? Back-end programming transitioned me from poor algorithmic programming to database programming using modules and techniques inside the database.

Tell us about your experience as an Oracle instructor. With the Advanced Oracle Database Administration class that I taught in Philadelphia beginning in 1998, my major concern was that Oracle DBAs must first of all function as back-end specialists with advanced techniques and knowledge that can benefit their company. I taught my students how to get the best results with a solid knowledge of architecture and particular techniques and with an understanding of how the database is working, inside and out.