>I want to strength my background in relational databases. My question to anyone is: Which would be more acceptable in the real world to make myself more marketable? Is it worth becoming a DBA in anything? Does that mean I need a certain level of Network administration background also? Things are moving so fast, it seems that we are being subtly forced to specialize.

If your path continues to be development work, then skip the DBA. Do take some intro DBA courses so you can learn some of the SQL basics. Then concentrate on Advanced SQL courses. If you want the Oracle path, learn PL/SQL and how to create stored procedures, packages, etc. THis is basically the path I followed for my Oracle training. The rest came from a set of Oracle books. Do a search in the Oracle forum on my member ID and the keywords Oracle Books to find the list and ISBNs.

IMO, you should also have some basic networking skills so you can defend yourself when those nasty network administrators blame all problems on the software and the developer.