I decided to build my first sand box ever. I always wanted one, but there was no time or reason until now. Fortunately, hardware is ridiculously cheap these days compared to the past, so you can actually run full-blown Oracle Applications on your home PC without compromises.

I built a Dual Core box with 8G of RAM for an install of E-Business Suite R12. For OS I chose Oracle EL5U2, mainly because I’m used to the RH/OEL clones, and also because I expected it to be less painful than other distributions.

I started slowly, as time allowed, spending some time chasing various libraries and packages on the Net. Eventually it took me a week to realize how tedious it is to go the manual way. I got so frustrated by the dependencies that I gave up and purchased access to the ULN network.

Just to illustrate the type of struggle I went through, I found four distinct lists of required packages for 10g installation (in Oracle documentation and metalink combined). I’d recommend Note 421308.1 - Requirements For Installing Oracle10gR2 On RHEL/OEL 5 (x86_64), which summarizes the database part in a neat way. I also encourage you not to underestimate requirements of related Note 376183.1 - Defining a “default RPMs” installation of the RHEL OS.

Nevertheless, it’s just way more easy to use the oracle-validated package, which will download all dependencies for you. Well, almost all.

The next step was to prepare the machine. The only tricky part (from the DBA point of view) is to setup a DNS server, but even that went well. There are plenty of nice howtos on the web — search for keyword “rndc”.

Once I had all the required packages installed, users created, kernel parameters set, domain name resolution working, and Xvnc started, it was time to call a wizard.

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Hot on the heels of my publishing our Applications DBA opening in Ottawa, Canada earlier this week, we now have an apps DBA opening in our office in Hyderabad as well.

Needless to say, we are seeing rapid uptake of our outsourced E-Business Suite 11i management services.

I have a senior Oracle Applications DBA opening at Pythian’s office in Hyderabad, India. This opening pays on an international payscale, meaning that I am ideally looking for an elite candidate working for a compensation plan in the 25-35 lacs range TCE. Remember, Pythian is not in India to save money on payroll, Pythian is in India to staff an elite workforce in that timezone. Feel free to apply if you aren’t at the 25+ lacs pa range yet in your career and let us decide.

The candidate I am looking for is delighted and excited with the apps dba workload and does not have aspirations to managing a big team. If you are my ideal candidate, you are the kind of person who thinks implementing Apps on RAC is exciting, or moving a large company’s Apps from Solaris to Linux would be super fun, or even just doing a massive 12i upgrade or installation sounds just dreamy. You will actually be doing these things. You will not have a team of 5-7 people doing them for you.

Working at Pythian is different than working in-house or as a consultant, because you’ll be making your contributions available to each of the customers assigned to your team, allowing you to see more use cases, more technologies, and work with more and varied environments, all the while building interesting and long-lasting working relationships with your peers.

The Hyderabad office is ideally situated in the Somajiguda district of Hyderabad, pretty much right downtown, or as downtown as downtown can be in a city that has a lake smack dab in the middle of it.

We support some of the most interesting and mission-critical Oracle Applications environments in the world, including one that is FDA-regulated in support of a global biosciences company. Meaning lives are at stake. It doesn’t get any more mission-critical, or more personally rewarding, than that.

Top criteria:

• Outstanding Oracle Apps DBA on UNIX skills, bonus points for Apps RAC and major implementation and upgrades experience
• Exceptional troubleshooting, problem-solving and learning skills
• Superior productivity per hour and overall getting-the-job-done-right abilities
• Fluent communication skills in English, both written and oral, are mandatory. Second or third languages are also a huge benefit (we have customers all over the world and are always eager to add a language to our repertoire)
• Core DBA skills are a prerequisite for Apps DBA at this level, but you know that already
• Publications, blogging and presentations experience and interest a plus
• Experience with Oracle Applications Server and Portal a plus
• SAP, Peoplesoft and other ERP experience a plus

Job highlights:

• Work in an elite team of Apps DBAs for an elite group and growing of customers; you’ll learn more here in a year than in any in-house DBA job no matter how long you stay; I personally guarantee it.
• Work and gain valuable experience on every mainstream platform, including AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, Linux, Tru64, Windows, etc.
• Support every mainstream database technology and feature, including Oracle RAC, advanced queuing, advanced replication, every flavour of dataguard, RMAN, streams, etc. etc.
• Work across multiple industries including health care, manufacturing, media, dot-com, education, retail, services, and many more.
• Work in a company that values hard work, not long work.
• Work in a company that will allow you to research and write articles, presentations and blog posts on company time, and pay for you to present your research at just about any user conference worldwide where it gets accepted.

Learn more about Pythian and see our customer list at http://www.pythian.com.

To apply:

Send me an email with a one-paragraph introduction of who you are and why you are exceptional to me at vallee@pythian.com. Feel free to attach your resume in any format (Word, PDF, RTF, ODT, whatever makes you happy.)