Dennis,
As always, you offer excellent suggestions.
You have all given me many things to consider. Thank you for taking the
time to help me out!
It is, indeed, a suberb mailing list.
Saira
-----Original Message-----
DENNIS WILLIAMS
Sent: December 17, 2003 3:40 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Saira
I think you have to decide what your goal is. Then you need to
decide
how to best accomplish that goal. One tool that can lead you toward a
goal
is self-study. I have used that tool many times myself. However, with
experience you learn the self-study tool has its limits. To consider
self-study, consider the following questions:
1. Is this an area that I can gain significant knowledge with a
reasonable
amount of effort? For example, are there good books available? Is the
area
well-defined enough for self-study?
2. Since I'm trying to substitute self-effort for work experience, is
this
an area where there are few people with real work experience?
3. Are there credentials that can be earned?
If you are considering putting significant effort into this area, it is
invaluable to do some informational interviews. Find someone that does
the
work you would like to or hires people that do the work. Interview them
to
find what skills and experiences are required and how you would acquire
those skills and experiences. Ask what their career path was as an
example.
Many career advice books describe how to secure and conduct
informational
interviews. In a way, that is what you are doing on this forum.
You have received some great replies to your posting. I think the wide
range
of replies are indicative of the problem. The ERP packages are very
large,
complex, expensive, and critically important for the client
organization.
The big packages like SAP and Oracle Apps are nearly always used by very
large corporations. There are a wide range of people that work with
these
packages, from specialized business users all the way down to the lowly
DBA.
Ideally, at a corporation, the various people work together as a team,
pooling their knowledge and skills.
Often these applications are installed by a team of vendor
installers
that travel the world doing just that task. And even if you did manage
to
get the application installed on your laptop, it would probably take a
lot
of training to operate significant portions of the application. When one
of
these applications are installed at a corporation, there are weeks of
training for many different people throughout the organization.
I would strongly suggest that you first focus on your DBA skills. This
list
is an excellent source of insights in how to deepen your DBA skills. You
might consider researching the Oracle interface for the various
applications. However, in general this part of the application is not
well
documented, even in the vendor documentation. But you might be able to
decode a significant amount of the interface. And you goal would be to
learn
enough to exhibit a keen interest in learning to a prospective employer
that
might consider hiring you over other candidates. If they are able to
easily
find candidates with years of experience . . . well, it isn't going to
be
very promising for you, regardless of how much self-study you've put in.
Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 1:24 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Is it that difficult though? Just to get familiar with it... if you've
worked with other similar software before?
I guess you'd be looking at a lot of theory, and not nearly enough
practice.
But then, how do I get obtain these more attractive, marketable skills?
I
must start somewhere, no?
Thanks,
Saira
-----Original Message-----
king
Sent: December 17, 2003 1:55 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
That right, packaged software like SAP and PeopleSoftware should be
learned
in the real implementation or real usage case. By simply getting the
software and use it yourself, it is very difficult to even grasp the
basic
idea about those business transactions.
----- Original Message -----
To: Multiple <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> recipients of list ORACLE-L
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 1:09 PM
Your enthusiasm is admirable, but I think that it would be extremely
difficult for you to learn any of these packages without actually being
in an environment where they are used.
It may be that Tecsys is a complex set of apps on the same level
as SAP or Oracle Apps, and if so, then maybe that background
would prepare you to tackle this on your own.
Either way, it will be difficult without access to official support,
which
you won't have unless you're in a working environment that includes
the app you are attempting to learn.
You would also not have exposure to the people that are actually
using the stuff, which is pretty important for software that is directly
used by most of the user community, unlike a database.
HTH
Jared
"Saira Somani-Mendelin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
12/17/2003 09:44 AM
Please respond to ORACLE-L
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
cc:
Subject: Career Advice
As an applications analyst/junior dba, I feel I need to learn more but
I'm not sure of the direction I should take, so I'm asking for advice.
Should I become interested in Oracle Apps? Or should I learn another
suite like SAP or Siebel or PeopleSoft? The difficulty is that my
company does not use any of these. We use a smaller package by Tecsys
called Elite and they don't have as many customers - or should I say, as
many customers with deep pockets.
I know I can get my hands on a working copy of SAP, what about the
others? I believe you can purchase an evaluation copy of Apps from the
Oracle Store. Has anyone actually tried to train themselves on any of
these products? Has anyone installed Apps at home for testing?
Sorry if this question has been presented on the list before.
Thanks,
Saira
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