Where to begin with Oracle and SQL

Seeing more and more questions on “where do I start with Oracle if I want to be a DBA?”  My perspective is a bit off since I’ve been surrounded by Oracle for over 20 years.  I hardly remember what it was like to start with Oracle and starting with Oracle now in 2013 is quite different than starting with Oracle in 1990.

Here is my list and everything on this list is excellent. I’m sure I missed a few good ones, but maybe people can add them in the comments.

Start with Oracle Docs, they are free and good!

• http://www.oracle.com/pls/db112/homepage

Get the best books and read them

• Expert Oracle Database Architecture by Thomas Kyte
• Troubleshooting Oracle Performance by Christian Antognini
• Refactoring SQL Applications by Stephane Faroult

A bit old, but this is a great overview of Oracle: Practical Oracle 8i by Jonathan Lewis

After you have read the above, dive into the important details:

• Optimizing Oracle Performance by Cary Milsap
• Oracle Core Essential Internals by Jonathan Lewis
• Oracle Wait Interface by R Shee, K Deshpande, K. Gopalakrishnan

If you know SQL but want to get great at SQL performance, read these books

• Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals by Jonathan Lewis
• SQL Tuning by Dan Tow
• Relational Database Index Design and the Optimizers by Tapio Lahdenmaki

Join Online discussions and follow blogs

• Oracle-L forum: www.freelists.org/list/oracle-l
• OTN forums: https://forums.oracle.com/forums
• Oaktable blogs: http://www.oaktable.net/oakienews

Create your own Oracle blog aggregator, here is mine: http://oracle.collected.info/

Go to conferences. First of all your local Oracle user groups and if you have the time and resources then go to the bigger conferences:

• Hotsos
• RMOUG
• UKOUG

If you are in the Bay Area, the Northern California Oracle User Group has exceptional quarterly meetings