Today we have a guest editorial from Hakim Ali.

I'd like to start with an analogy. Consider the field of medicine. There is general practice, and there are specializations in, for example, surgery (even different kinds of surgery), organs (cardiology, ophthalmology, endocrinology...), life cycle stages (pediatrics, geriatrics), genders (gynecology), even specific procedures (obstetrics, anesthesia, radiation), and so on. Maybe there was a time in the past when the amount of knowledge in the area was small enough that it could be managed and practiced well by one doctor. That is certainly not the case today.

Looking at database work today, some of the better known roles that one can specialize in are production support/admin, development, and business intelligence. Just like medicine became too big a body of knowledge to be competently practiced by one physician, has data also become so big that one good DBA can't do it all anymore? Are you a DBA who does it all, or do you specialize in one area?

Please vote via the poll that is set up and share your thoughts via the discussion page.