April 18, 2017 at 8:24 pm
I consider myself a jr DBA and has less than 2 years of experience. Now its hard to find a position with my experience because it looks like everyone is looking for an architect and yes I have seen Jr level position with 5+ years of experience. Anyways, recently I had an interviews and hiring managers and lead or Sr DBAs asked my questions about SSIS, which I was not able to answer. So the question is, what and how exactly DBAs help BI developers with SSIS packages? Can someone please help me out since I haven't worked in a large company so I have no experience in working with data warehouse, and how to help out BI developers? Can please someone give me some pointers? I really appreciate it. I would like to get myself well prepared for my next interview.
April 20, 2017 at 5:41 am
Generally it's down to an understanding of how SSIS works. I'm not an expert at it and my work at a large company didn't require me to be. However, I did have to know the basics of the functionality in order to assist others when troubleshooting. More often than not it came back to my experience as a developer prior to becoming a DBA, as well as knowledge of T-SQL and general database behavior. I could rely on the BI people to know the details of SSIS (usually). I just had to supply the rest.
If you're coming into this and all your IT experience is as a DBA, you're in a tough spot. A DBA is usually considered a senior position. People have been working in other IT positions for 3-5 years before becoming a DBA. All I can tell you for sure is, if the area you're interviewing is requiring lots of SSIS, learn that. Most of the places I've interviewed, that's a very secondary skill set. They're usually much more interested in your knowledge of SQL Server, Windows Server (and soon Unix), T-SQL, database design, disaster recovery, availability, tuning, troubleshooting, etc.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
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Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
April 20, 2017 at 6:18 am
newdba2017 - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 8:24 PMI consider myself a jr DBA and has less than 2 years of experience. Now its hard to find a position with my experience because it looks like everyone is looking for an architect and yes I have seen Jr level position with 5+ years of experience. Anyways, recently I had an interviews and hiring managers and lead or Sr DBAs asked my questions about SSIS, which I was not able to answer. So the question is, what and how exactly DBAs help BI developers with SSIS packages? Can someone please help me out since I haven't worked in a large company so I have no experience in working with data warehouse, and how to help out BI developers? Can please someone give me some pointers? I really appreciate it. I would like to get myself well prepared for my next interview.
Here is what the better IT organizations expect from the DBA in terms of SSIS; that is if you are a pure DBA, junior level, playing a supporting role to the BI development group. If during the interview process there seems to be some confusion about whether they are looking for a DBA or a BI developer, then propably the job isn't right for you at this point, because two years isn't long enough to have gained sufficient experience in both.
- Understand how to install and configure SSIS.
- Understand the various options and process for deploying an SSIS package (SSISDB catalog, file system, MSDB, etc.)
- Understand how the SSISDB catalog database works in general (how to install it, projects, folders, permissions, versioning, viewing execution reports, etc.)
- Understand how to troubleshoot, secure, and performance tune an SSIS package (connectivity, SQLAgent jobs, SSIS operator/user roles, running packages under a proxy account, delayedvalidation setting, protectionlevel setting, reading the execution event report, various configuration options that manage buffers and memory, etc.).
- If you are a more advanced DBA, then you may be called to paritipate in architectural and design metting. In that case understand general concepts behind ETL (bulk loading, SCD and MERGE loading, star-schema table design). This is primarily the BI developer's job, but you'll be handicapped if you don't at least know the basic
David Peter Hansen_Integration Services (SSIS) for the DBA. This guy does some very good presentations that are relevent to what you need.
https://youtu.be/RT5tn0BMadM
Optionally:
The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Extracting, Cleaning, Conforming, and Delivering Data by Ralph Kimball
https://www.amazon.com/Data-Warehouse-ETL-Toolkit-24-Sep-2004/dp/B011T7LXQ2/
http://www.kimballgroup.com/2008/11/fact-tables/
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Business Intelligence Development Beginners Guide by Reza Rad
https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Intelligence-Development-Beginners-2014-05-13/dp/B01N3ME3XJ/
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
April 20, 2017 at 6:30 am
This is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt. I don't have 5+ years in data, but I do have 7+ years in software development. I always clearly explain to people I have less in data, but I then outline why what I'm currently doing--which is me saying that I am working on very senior level work that 5-year+ veterans would work on--makes up for it.
If you can't honestly do that and you feel you lack the experience or skills for certain roles like a BI developer or data architect, then as everyone above is saying, get out there is learn the skills you lack. I wouldn't go out there and say to put all your eggs in SSIS, especially if data architect is a common position you see, but it's a good start. The reason I say that, especially with data architect, even with positions that I have failed to answer SSIS questions on, the theory and logic on how I would approach the problem outside of SSIS from a data architect perspective still landed me a offer. That's because in most cases, it's not just knowing SSIS that lands you the job, it's how you leverage what you know to solve the problem, SSIS or not.
And just for piece of mind too. I've straight up told hiring managers I am not a SSIS master nor do I use it as much as you would like. But, anything you can do in SSIS I can likely do with TSQL. I explained how I was trained to do everything with TSQL first without the GUI. Thus, if you want me to transition that to SSIS, it wouldn't be a problem.
To close, start picking up some of the good book recommendations suggested in the prior post and start learning as much as possible. If you're a DBA, it should click faster than someone without that 2 years of experience.
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