35
Advice Line
Three seasoned technologists on the merits of humility, simplicity, and education
HEMANT K. CHITALE
HECTOR MADRID
DMITRI KHANINE
Company: Standard Chartered Bank, a global
financial institution with employees in more than
70 countries
Job title/description: Product specialist within
the Group Functions Systems Development
team, focusing on Oracle Database
Location: Singapore
Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified
Professional DBA (Oracle9i Database), with 21
years of experience using Oracle products
What advice do you have about how to get
into database development? For a newcomer,
even if you have a formal degree in computer
science, spend six months to a year interning
in various areas of specialization. I did
some programming and some hardware
configuration before finally identifying my
calling. Once you’re in your chosen stream, be
attentive to industry trends. I don’t formally
“network” in the most frequently used sense
of the word—but I do read, share, and interact
with others in the community through e-mail
lists, Oracle forums, and blog posts. And be
humble—you’ll never know everything.
What technology has most changed your
life? I have to put out the simple response
that you probably hear most often: the
internet. Not for its IRCs [Internet Relay Chats]
and social networking but for economic,
international, business, and technology news;
e-mail lists and forums; and the ability to
order books from overseas countries online.
What would you like to see Oracle, as a
company, do more of Present more Oracle
Technology Days in Southeast Asia—in
Singapore particularly!
Company: SST Software, a company that
manages agricultural imagery data
Job title/description: Senior Oracle DBA,
responsible for database administration, backup
and recovery, performance tuning, software
upgrades, and security management
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Oracle credentials: Oracle Certified Master DBA
and Oracle Certified Professional DBA (Oracle7
through Oracle Database 11g), with more than 20
years of experience using Oracle products
Which new features in Oracle Database are
you currently finding most valuable? Oracle
Automatic Storage Management and the
Volume Manager. Another nice feature is
Secure Files, which improves performance,
optimizes storage, and provides an additional
security layer.
What advice do you have for those just
getting into application development?
When designing an application, seriously
evaluate the amount of intelligence it’s going
to manage. This will define the amount
of coding, complexity, round-trips to the
server, and scalability. And be aware that
the application user is different from the big
database user.
Tell us about your role with Oracle University
(OU) and the value you see in this program.
I’ve been a certified OU instructor for more
than 15 years, and I really believe that an OU
course is the best way to get acquainted with
Oracle technology. The courses provide a good
balance between theory and practice, and
professionals can start being productive the
day the course concludes.
Company: ECM Solutions, an Oracle Universal
Content Management consulting company
Job title/description: Senior architect, helping
clients with their Oracle Universal Content
Management implementations and crisis
recovery and providing customized training
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Length of time using Oracle products: 15 years
How did you get started in I T? When I was in
eighth grade, in 1989, my buddy’s dad built
a PC. That machine couldn’t do much more
than let you play a couple of primitive games,
and it was using a VCR as its tape drive, but
it was so cool! We were spending days with
that “PC,” and soon enough I learned how to
write simple programs.
What’s your favorite tool or technique on
the job? Recently I became a fan of code
generation. It lets you bump your use of
programming languages and tools to a
much higher level—almost instantly. It’s
metaprogramming, if you will. If the code
you’re writing is repetitive and you can’t easily
avoid writing it, don’t write it. Generate it!
Which new features of Oracle Fusion
Middleware are you currently finding most
valuable? We’re migrating our shared Oracle
Universal Content Management hosting
environment to the Site Studio 10g Release
4 component and its new placeholder
architecture, which allows us to simplify
sitewide changes and slash maintenance
expenses. Previously, a small change to a site
could easily result in more than two dozen
template modifications. Now there will be
only one file to change.
