The Grumpy DBA blogs . . .

Imagination – Above intelligence? You bet. The ability to think outside the box is critical, much of that comes from experience.  I am not a huge Star Trek fan, but I remember a scene from The Wrath of Khan when the crew was trying to force their enemy’s shields down and Kirk said “You have to know why things work.”  That is an excellent point, so many things can affect an Oracle instance, database, cluster, etc.  It is often like the large mixing boards that music producers use in a studio.  If you move one slide up 12 others may move down.  It partially comes back to #4, that if you amass knowledge in many different areas, they will mix in such a way that your imagination can find soluti0ns to which there is no (apparent) logic.