The Best Thing You Can Do for Your Oracle Career (Sign the Pledge)

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Yesterday, a colleague asked what she could do to improve her Oracle career. Having recently missed one of the best chances I’ve ever had by not knowing enough about parallel query execution plans, my answer was “never stop studying.” I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t been practicing what I preach but I am not going to let that continue for another day longer.

When I was younger, I was a voracious reader. I would spend all my spare change in buying books or photocopying books. I need to start thinking young again. As the founder of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford, said on page 89 of My Philosophy of Industry and Moving Forward: “Anyone who stops learning is old—whether this happens at twenty or at eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young but becomes constantly more valuable—regardless of physical capacity.”

For a limited time, the good folk at Red Gate are giving away Tom Kyte’s latest book Expert Oracle Database Architecture: Oracle Database 9i, 10g, and 11g Programming Techniques and Solutions for free, so I’ll start there. You don’t even have to give them your email address in return. What’s better than Tom Kyte’s best book and what’s better than free? I’m sure there’s a lot in there that I never knew or had forgotten or has changed or improved since I last encountered it in an earlier version of Oracle. Perhaps I’ll be ready the next time Lady Luck comes knocking

I pledge to read Expert Oracle Database Architecture: Oracle Database 9i, 10g, and 11g Programming Techniques and Solutions by Tom Kyte in the next four to eight weeks.

Do the best thing you can do for your Oracle career. Pick a good Oracle book and make a pledge to read it in a time frame that works for you.

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