We had discussion about the profile of a DBA in our Oraganisation.

Today's DBA has to perform many roles and is expected to expand beyond
Database only Focus .

He has to have expertise in atlease one Operating System .
He should also be fairly conversant with Networking Technologies.
Additionally Web skills like Web Server , Proxy and Mail server
Administration knowledge is definite plus.

The requirement is the DBA is expected to give first level trouble
shooting support in all related fields.

We tried to arrive at Profile of a DBA who is also a part System Admin
, part Network Admin and part Web Admin. We have given some
percentages to  skills .

100 % Database Administration
 PLUS
70 % System Administration  for any OS (Win2k / Solaris / Linux)
 PLUS
60 % Network Adminstration  (LAN / WAN Technologies)
 PLUS
50 % Web Skills like Web Server / Proxy Server  / Mail Server
Administration

Hope this is a fairly accurate assesment. This forum may share their
own estimate & experiences.

About the Language skill a DBA should know , apart from procedural SQL
like Oracle's PL/SQL , the consensus is he should be in the know of
XML too. Is this the correct picture ?

you can find one of these if he is

1) bored with database
2) bored with system admin
3) bored with network setup, configuration
4) bored with programming
5) has over 5 ~ 10 years experience which probably 3 of them would be
DBA (to be honest 3 years experience DBA depends on enviroment can be a
Database baby sitter)

And from your conclusions you assume that a DBA has not to get involved
in applicartion design which is a big failure in many projects, I just
saw two DataMart projects with no DBA support and failed poorly

May I ask are you looking for a one man army or you are looking for a DBA?

What you are looking in we call it System Engineer and not a DBA (well
if what you are looking for is a Database Baby Sitter then you are in a
good way)

Regards

Note: By the way add your percentage they add up to 280%

I would like to ask what are the profiles of the manager of the DBA? What
does the DBA's manager require in terms of :
    'Management skills' - whatever they are?
    'Technical ability'
    'Oracle knowledge'
    'Business knowledge'
    'Project knowledge'
    'People skills'  - again what ever they are?
    'etc....'
If you require an Oracle database for your business then you require a DBA.
You could buy a ready made DBA from another company, or, you can make one
yourselves.
If you are going to make one yourselves, then  find somebody who knows how
to learn and solve problems with enthusiasm, e.g. a graduate with one or two
university degrees to their name.
Give them a budget for training etc, give them the problem as you see it
e.g. 'Please be prepared to manage and administer our business critical
system' and then' get out of there way and let them do their job.

To try and define a DBA down to individual work objects is nonsensical.

George Barbour.

A knowledge of shell scripting is essential and Perl knowledge makes
them a little more {*filter*} technically also.

<gratuitous offence warning>
my wife would certainly agree that pearl knowledge would make me somewhat
more {*filter*}.
</gratuitous offence warning>
--
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
Audit Commission UK
*****************************************
Please include version and platform
and SQL where applicable
It makes life easier and increases the
likelihood of a good answer
******************************************

Many Thanks for all those who responded .

My Question , simply put is ,

how much of
          an OPERATING SYSTEM  expertise
                      and
                 NETWORKING  expertise

                   a DBA should have for effective functioning in his DBA Role ?

May be others can respond from their experience.

OrA

For effective functioning, the most important things are to

1) understand the basic concepts underlying networking, operating systems,
and programming languages.  You don't have to be an expert in any of them,
although knowing the principles of how they work is important.  For
example, knowing everything about the scheduler and how it works in
Solaris, Linux, and NT isn't necessary for a DBA to know.  Knowing what a
scheduler is, and understanding the concepts of timeslices and priority,
is critical to understanding how the operating system and database work
together.

The reason for the above is so that
2)  you know what you don't know.  You'll need to understand where your
knowledge stops and when you'll need to consult with someone who does
know the details.

That said, managing Oracle on a particular platform does require that you
understand certain things in depth--but it's a pretty limited subset.  
When the Oracle documentation mentions an operating system or networking,
or programming language concept, you should at least know enough about
your platform to know how to find out how it works on your system of
choice.  For instance, a DBA should know how to find out the block size
for a particular filesystem or how a language handles database
connectivity.  They don't have to be able to double as sysadmins or
developers in order to be an effective DBA.  A great one, perhaps.

Jer