I am a Computer Science & Engineering graduate applying to the University of Florida for admission

to the graduate program in Computer Science. My goal is to pursue a career towards the development of
high performance database systems. To reach my goal, my present work as an Oracle Database
Administrator at PayPal, Chennai under the payroll of Computer Sciences Corporation, India plays a
significant role. I feel education is an important tool to reach my goal which always taught me life is a
process of continuous evolution.

As I started exploring more about computers and computer applications, I learnt that every application is
supported by a database to store data in the back-end. This inspired me to pursue my Bachelor of
Technology in Computer Science and Engineering at College of Engineering, Jawaharlal Nehru
Technological University (JNTU), India. Subjects that engrossed me during my course of engineering are
“Database Management Systems”, “Operating Systems”, “Computer Networks”, “Distributed Systems”
and “Data Structures and Algorithms” which introduced me to the fundamentals of computer science and
honed my programming skills. The concepts of DBMS, SQL and its derivation from Relational Theory
were very riveting.

I have done a comprehensive study on how a SQL query will fetch and retrieve the data requested from
disks and how the data is actually stored in disks and studied SQL and its origin from Relational Theory
(SQL and Relational Theory by C.J.Date), Database Architecture and the importance and working
mechanism of Components of DBMS like Storage Engine and Query Processor. I worked on a project to
develop a web based database application which is used to keep track of all the departmental activities.
The project helped to correlate theory that I had learnt on DBMS to its actual implementation in real-time.

Proceeding ahead, I worked on another project to develop a WYSIWYG windows application

“HTML/XML Editor” which is used to create and edit HTML and XML documents. This application is
unique in providing Syntax highlighting and Code Suggestion to the user at the same time being light-
weight. This project helped me to understand how the data is stored and retrieved from XML file. I was
one of the writers of my department’s technical magazine. I was also a part of the technical team that
develops applications to the department.

My work in databases paved the way for an employment as an Oracle Database Administrator at PayPal.
As a DBA, I have developed core skill sets in the installation, configuration, maintenance & tuning of
Oracle servers 9i and 10g on various Operating Systems including Sun Solaris, Linux and Windows
NT/2000/03 Server. I have gained a good experience in Database Design, Planning Backup Recovery
Strategies, Administration and Performance Management of Oracle Databases. I have worked on
Performance Tuning project at PayPal. The project primarily taught me on writing efficient SQL,
allocating appropriate computing resources, and analyzing wait events and contention in the
system. It also taught me the need for Database Indexes in Query Processing, its working mechanism
and the algorithms it uses to retrieve the requested data in less possible time. I have also worked on tuning
of design of the database.

I gained a real-time experience in writing UNIX shell scripts and PERL programming for automating
DBA Tasks. I have also worked on GoldenGate, a leading provider of real-time data integration
solutions. My work includes Setting up GoldenGate (DB-DB and DB-FlatFile) and troubleshooting with
issues regarding Golden Gate. Apart from DBA’s regular work, I also developed many web-based
database applications using Java which are currently in use by DBA community in PayPal. I have
implemented Dataguard for disaster recovery and Oracle Streams (Transaction Data Management) for
replicating data for the databases used by these applications.
Recently, I have undergone training on Oracle 11g RAC given by Oracle University to PayPal DBA’s.
This training taught me the emerging developments in the oracle database world. During this
training I got an opportunity to interact with the database experts from Oracle University. The
experience gained in the training and interaction with the technical teams ameliorated my
acumen on Database Architecture and Distributed Systems.

Having done considerable work on relational databases, I want to enhance my skills on databases by
learning different types of databases and in turn contribute to the database society by working in the
development of future DBMS. The Database Systems Research & Development Center at University of
Florida offers one of the best courses in this domain. The application driven research and development
carried out in this lab coheres to my liking. An academic program under the guidance of able professors
in this lab would help me acquire a wider knowledge of DBMS and help me realize my goal of pursuing a
career in database systems. I believe with my experience and exposure in the field, I can prove to be an
effective and reliable team member in carrying out cutting edge research in this domain.