# STUDY_PLAN — 10 Days, Nov 5–14

## Daily repetition stack (every day, in order)

1. Say scoring words aloud (00_START_HERE).
2. Replay yesterday's audio once at 1.25x.
3. Recite intro spine from memory (CHEAT_SHEET §7).
4. One STAR story aloud with its metric.
5. New day's Focus + Listen + Lab below.
6. Done-check before bed.

## Days 1–10

### Day 1 — RAC
- Focus: cache fusion, interconnect, split-brain/voting disk, services/TAF.
- Listen: E1. Lab: voting-disk failure drill + TAF service failover sim.
- Say-aloud: "RAC is not HA without fencing and quorum — interconnect first, clusterware second."
- Desk: sketch 2-node RAC + voting disk. Done-check: explain split-brain prevention.

### Day 2 — DataGuard
- Focus: FSFO, transport/apply lag, switchover vs failover, standby redo.
- Listen: E2. Lab: lag query + switchover runbook walkthrough.
- Say-aloud: "Switchover is planned and lossless; failover is unplanned and may lose data."
- Desk: write lag-check query from memory. Done-check: state zero-RPO conditions.

### Day 3 — GoldenGate
- Focus: extract-pump-replicat CDC, trail files, conflict resolution, lag monitoring.
- Listen: E3. Lab: lag monitoring + conflict-resolution design for one table.
- Say-aloud: "Bi-directional replication loops without conflict rules — design the resolution first."
- Desk: draw extract-pump-replicat flow. Done-check: name 3 conflict types + resolution.

### Day 4 — Performance tuning
- Focus: AWR/ASH/ADDM drill order, execution plans, baselines, quantified results.
- Listen: E4. Lab: top-wait triage on a sample AWR + before/after plan compare.
- Say-aloud: "Top wait event first, top SQL second, one hypothesis, then test."
- Desk: AWR drill-order flashcard. Done-check: recite drill order without notes.

### Day 5 — Backup, recovery, patching
- Focus: RMAN, PITR, restore validation, patch + rollback plan.
- Listen: E5. Lab: RMAN restore + PITR rehearsal + patch rollback steps.
- Say-aloud: "An untested backup is not a backup — restore proves it."
- Desk: recovery runbook one-pager. Done-check: RTO/RPO numbers for your lab.

### Day 6 — Exadata
- Focus: smart scan offload, storage cells, HCC, partitioning for payments scale.
- Listen: E6. Lab: offload-eligibility check + partition design exercise.
- Say-aloud: "Offload only what the cell can filter — functions and binds decide."
- Desk: offload yes/no checklist. Done-check: name 3 offload blockers.

### Day 7 — HA/DR + sev handling
- Focus: RTO/RPO targets, runbooks, sev escalation, customer-impact-first comms.
- Listen: E7. Lab: sev tabletop — narrate impact, mitigation, prevention.
- Say-aloud: "Customer impact first, root cause second, stay-fixed third."
- Desk: sev-comms template. Done-check: full sev narrative under 3 minutes.

### Day 8 — AWS RDS gap
- Focus: RDS vs EC2 Oracle, DMS full+CDC, CloudWatch/OEM/Splunk/Datadog, Aurora/Postgres.
- Listen: E8. Lab: DMS prereqs checklist + CloudWatch alarm map for one DB.
- Say-aloud: "DMS is logical — needs keys and source logging, same as GoldenGate CDC."
- Desk: RDS-vs-EC2 decision table. Done-check: 3 DMS prereqs + honest gap line.

### Day 9 — Compliance + Agile
- Focus: SOX/PCI (least privilege, audit trails, key rotation, PII), Agile ceremonies, product-owner delivery.
- Listen: E9. Lab: audit-trail review + reframe one change-control story as iterative delivery.
- Say-aloud: "Compliance is evidence — every privileged action logged and reviewable."
- Desk: SOX/PCI control checklist. Done-check: one Agile story with sprint outcome.

### Day 10 — Mock loop
- Focus: DBA scenario + job-fit case + behavioral STAR simulation.
- Listen: E10. Lab: full timed mock, gap list ≤5 items with owners.
- Rounds: (1) RAC/DataGuard/GoldenGate scenario triage, (2) business-driven case (e.g., payments HA decision with RTO/RPO trade-off), (3) behavioral STAR with metrics vs Excellence + Do the Right Thing.
- Say-aloud: weakest answer 3x. Done-check: gap list ≤5 items with owners.

## BASE-TO-BUILD

| Base (23 yr Oracle) | Build (Capital One CORE needs) |
|------|------|
| RAC / DataGuard / GoldenGate / RMAN / AWR-ASH | Same stack on CORE cloud layer + observability/connectivity/resilience framing |
| Exadata on-prem depth | Exadata + AWS RDS/EC2/S3/IAM/CloudWatch migration path (DMS, Aurora/Postgres) |
| Change-control + enterprise escalations | Agile-team delivery: product owner, ceremonies, iterative + Jenkins CI/CD |
| Runbook fixes, sev response | Customer-impact-first sev + fixes that stay fixed (automation, chaos/resilience) |
| SOX/PCI audit experience | Least-privilege, audit trails, key rotation, PII — stated as evidence |
| 23-yr Oracle breadth (TSE-style diagnostics) | Integration-lead breadth: cross-team unblock, mentoring, distributed-DB depth (WAL/replication/sharding literacy per current Principal-DB bar) |