The finest leaders are humble servants, those who are willing to lead from the front, those who are willing to make themselves accessble, those who demonstrate real compassion and respect for those they lead.

I learned SQL syntax SIDU, ACID, concurrency etc. 1992 at McDonell-Douglas company. My experiences with Oracle DBA started since 2002 I took BMC Oracle9i DBA company training class. Years earlier 1999, BMC DBA gave me her Oracle 8.1.7 training material media. (Note: BMC makes Patrol and SQLBacktrack which were industrial flagship software) with installing, monitoring, managing, cloning and DR backup recovery of Oracle 10g/11g databases. In 2005, after 7 years at BMC Software, I went to work for SBM Atlantia of SBM Offshore in Houston as Database Administrator and Developer . I managed Oracle 9i database for PDMS (Piping Design Management Software) and SQL Server 2000/2005 databases for apps, I administered web servers (webmaster left), hands-on lead C# intranet programming and mentor junior programmers. One of the significant C# projects I had done is a secure XML electronic payment interface between our Finance dept and Wells Fargo via HTTPS per Wells Fargo bank's specifications. Another significant C# project is a web UI, service timer based monitoring program that monitors our servers and alerts notification with email using the software product model BMC Patrol. (We didn't have tools like Idera DM or Quest Spotlight).

If you think DBA work is hard, you should try the partial differential equations I have dealt with in post-graduate school. Earlier 2006 dealing with SQL Server 2005, I had a database wait-type "miscellaneous" I could not find any documentation. I used a lot webcast from Kimberley Tripp's www.sqlskills.com to improve my skills. (big Thanks to Kimberly) It is true it is a lot more productive to be a DBA with database application development experiences. The reason is you know the technical code detail, you are able to identify problems. Recently we had a case: 3rd party software developer is not aware default .Net sql command timeout is set 30 secs until queries are falling out with timeout due to lately increased recordset size and increased query IO demands passing the threshold. This changes a look-like database problem back to development problem. Another case is none of the developers know the fillfactor on index in SQL Server should not be left default 0 unless they are static tables. Another example is developer does not understand the SQL Server default isolation level utilizes locking versus snapshot isolation uses row-versioning to accomplish concurrency. One other time it was a disk RAID array did not provide sufficient IOPS. Here is my two-ways RAID calculator (the actual IOPS per disk varies slightly by disk make model per the seek time and latency).

When others are partying, crashing, waiting, wondering, I am reading a book. Me and my wife often spent 4-6 hours at book store on weekends. To keep my brain young and vital, I always keep up with the latest technologies by studying, for example, early days to understand transaction processing and concurrency (I have found some database people, even authors, editors, don't understand this level of details. Some DBAs do not know IO performance related to RAID config and the importance of memory plays in database performance). You can find sample scripts on Internet, then start writing your own scripts. I have presented a bunch on SQL Saturdays and HASSUG over years. In 2008 my branch VP deceased after interview before I started working for Heritage Health System of Universal American in Houston as IT Applications Manager , we lost top-down support and hang on till the financial market crash. It was unbelievable. Moving up in 2009, I joined privately-owned nation-wide green company (headquartered on San Felipe Street, Houston) as Sr. Database Administrator. I administered all SQL Server practice.  I also have an Oracle10g instance of Oracle Financial including prod/qa/dev and practice on Oracle11g. I solved all database performance problems and made database service extremely smooth .

From 2013 to 2016, I worked for an oil company (headquartered on Post Oak Blvd, Houston) as IT Database Administrator Sr. until oil market crashed. After Oracle University training, I am working on update myself knowledge to Oracle 12c and 12c RAC skills afetr Data Guard, also learning SQL Server 2016 features and MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft Azure and attended SQLPASS Summit 2014. (Besides Microsoft sessions, some sessions/presenters are same year after year due to selection. Some advanced sessions has no practical use. Lower level below 400 you can get better deals free from SQL Saturdays). From 2016 on, I took a job for oil downstream company as Oracle/SQL DBA, I handle all Oracle and SQL Server databases. In 2019, company is heavily involved in SAP HANA self-help. That system was constructed by a big consulting firm. I took SAP HANA 2.0 training (SPS04) - HA100, HA200 and become DBA of Oracle, SQL Server, SAP-HANA. SAP-HANA came from the original of Sybase which was partner with SQL Server, so there are a lot similarities. It is fairly easy for an experienced DBA like me. In 2020-2022 during Covid19 pandemic, I started working remotely as a contract consultant. In 2022, I start working remotely for a VA company which supports Government projects with a required public clearance.

Prior 1998-2005 BMC Software 7 years, I worked at Compaq with C++ and international locale multibyte languages and hardware (my manager at Compaq is an American by birth, studied in Japan, learned fluent Japanese and married to a Japanese woman). Before Compaq, I worked for KBC for energy software data interface with Oracle and PI (time based) database via API. In 1994 after 6 years full-time working, I finished the MBA. The same time I was working as an entrepreneur on my own company Reprise Robotec when McDonell-Douglas was sold. At the dawn of Internet revolution, I rode www wave to join Enersoft (NYMEX funded) to build natural gas trading software on C++ and Oracle. In 1998, I joined BMC IT department for web then CRM database application development and administration.

I started programming in 1981, code in many languages over the years, Java since 1995, C# since 2003. At BMC, I was trained Oracle 9i DBA skills (and self-learned), at SBM, I attend SQL Server 2005 DBA training (for much stuff I have already known. I learned much stuff from attending Kimberly Tripp's online webcast 2006-2007). I have built up my own C#, T-SQL library, DBA SQL Server 2005/2008 T-SQL scripts and Oracle 9i, 10g, 11g RMAN scripts (~300GB repository) . My former colleague wrote a SQL book from collective work experiences published by Redgate free ebook. For a copy of my resume, please email mailto: .@. jasonswong16@gmail.com .@. As you might know, with a bit of luck when war broke out, President Eisenhower was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel at age 46 after 16 years as a major , and antipathy with his patron General Douglas MacArther (probably against general's having mistress? You got to read between the lines in Wiki.). Everybody has lucky and unlucky days. The Mighty has arranged everything. It is already written, you just don't know it yet. If you want to move up fast, you might have to sarcrifice the other aspects of life such as frequently moving or travel for work. It may not be worth.