Change of Role and Profile….(and so an expansion of Technical learning)

It’s been long I wrote a blog on my experience with Oracle Database Performance. Thought of writing about the reason for this long break. I moved from a Customer Support Profile to an Asia Pacific Sales Profile. While this is a kind of Sales Profile, I am still a Technical Resource. The change is in the number of production issues that I used to work on under customer support role has come down drastically.  However, this also means that previously when I used to focus only on Oracle Database (working on Latches, mutexes, optimizer, query optimization etc), this profile demands production infrastructure optimization and does not restrict my skillset just to Oracle Database.

These days, I have been working on Solaris and ZFS Storage extensively. Though these were new technologies for me, my APAC team had been very supportive on getting me up to the speed. Being an Oracle Database expert, this additional knowledge is playing a critical role, as I can now take a top-down approach in solving a customer problem. I remember some of my user group presentations, where I used so present a slide with a production architecture that comprises of “Database – Application – OS” and I used to speak more about Database and Application Optimization.  I am now working towards adding another layer i.e. OS and Storage. Optimal Performance of these stacks are critical as well. So, don’t be surprised, if, in future, I blog on some of these stacks  ;).

Ah..let me also mention this. The best thing about this role had been my nomination and participation in “Elite Engineering Exchange” program. I could interact with Worldwide Oracle Experts, from all Domains (Server, Storage, Database, Network) and obvious to say, this interaction brought a big change in me.