Theory is nice, but hands on experience is crucial. Go through the command
reference manual and make sure they practice most of the important commands.

A decent knowledge of OS's is also important (Linux/UNIX). The other thing
that is very nice if you work in a development environment is a very good
knowledge of SQL and the ability to help developers. I find this to be an
appalling omission in many DBA's these days.

I look for support experience  (operational or development), sql
tuning skills, problem solving skills, communication skills, and multi
vendor experience (IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Open source).

On Dec 12, 12:52 am, "rhino" <No.offline.contact.ple...@anonymous.com>
wrote:

It is difficult to find a DB2 production support DBA role without any
prior experience. IBM certification for DB2 database administration
augments your credentials but can not be substitute for years of
experience. I know Adabas DBAs who weren't allowed to work on
production systems till they had 5-7 years of experience. The easiest
first step towards a DB2 DBA career is to start as a developer or Dev
DBA or Project DBA as some call it. Your work would involve writing
stored procedures, UDFs, writing and rewriting dynamic SQL, SQL
tuning, writing shell and Perl scripts etc. Strong knowledge of SQL,
DB2 SQL PL, shell and/or Perl scripting and a general working
knowledge of Unix systems would be required.

As you continue to work as a Dev DBA, you would find opportunities to
get involved in production support work and in time would find
yourself independently responsible for production systems. As you
progress towards this path, you would need to understand basics of OS
administration, storage and network systems, proprietary backup/
storage servers (TSM/Veritas/EMC), application servers, specific
administration needs of packaged applications (SAP, PeopleSoft,
Siebel, Bussiness Objects etc) and so on.

Due to shortage of human resource with required skills, some companies
assign production support roles to people with some training and
almost no experience.

Regardless of whether you are a seasoned expert or a newbie, the most
important resource for DB2 is the Information Center. Other
educational resources like the DeveloperWorks library of Redbooks and
articles, books, this usenet group, IDUG DB2-L list, various blogs
(planet DB2) and in general, people willing to help would be help you
understand the systems and complete the tasks. Of the very few
databases that I have worked with, I have found DB2 educational
resources and community support the best.

The age old saying of - "a well-read DBA is a good DBA", still holds
good.

Wishing you and your students all the best towards a challenging,
exciting and rewarding career as a DB2 DBA,
Sanjuro

Hi,
I come from "AS/400" world: DB2 is "inside" the operating systems and
they usually say that OS/400 doesn't need database administrator...
...but, when it comes to sql, if you want your queries to run faster
(and all your server to run faster), you need indexing strategies and
work management: tuning ;-)
I've arrived to db tuning and work management from rpg programming and
after many years:
every day I need to (and I'm glad to) learn something new :-)

Imvho you could try to teach your students that - even if a strong
knowledge of DB2 (or programming languages or operating system) is very
important - it's important to "see" all the environment (including
people - and "users") you work with.
And prepare them to go on studying as long as they will work: after all
this may be one of the more interesting point of this type of work ;-)

My two "AS/400" cents :-)
    Stefano P.