May 24, 2010 at 6:06 am
It sure seems to me that small and medium-sized companies are not hiring trained or experienced DBAs in any great quantity. Looking back 15 years in my own IT career I've seen a pattern of "DBA by committee." No single person or group officially designated as the overall authority for the databases or database servers, and certainly not people who specifically trained for such a job title as DBA.
In my current company it's the same thing. Both in our Legacy foxpro environment and in our new SQL Server environment, nobody has that title. Attempts to move in that direction have been crushed, I suppose by those who either didn't want to spend the money, or who thought either their turf or goals would be negatively impacted by such a hire.
The duties are divided up between our data architect and his developers ( design and most performance tuning), a "code release" person who runs scripts to update code or schemas, Systems (SQL installs plus commvault backup/restore/DR ) and myself handling most disk space projections and sql agent maintenance jobs. I still handle backups, restores, log shipping and maintenance jobs on some other sql servers, but I'm not the DBA ( we don't have one in that sense )
Obviously if you look on Dice.com etc you do see DBA openings, but from an advancement perspective at my own company, it's hard to stay focused on studying SQL topics when there doesn't seem to be much prospect for putting them to use.
May 24, 2010 at 6:37 am
Heh... didn't you know? SQL Server is just a place to store data and T-SQL is so easy that you don't actually need a "pro" at it. :-P;-):-D:w00t::-):hehe:
I agree with you. I worked for one company that hired a lot of developers and I was the one that got to interview them for SQL skills (or, I should say, lack of). It's amazing how many people will write that they're an "expert" in SQL Server and not know how to do more than simple SELECTs, INSERTs, and the occasional single row UPDATE. Obviously I didn't let those people "in" but the correlation between companies that do and the companies that have real performance and data accuracy problems is nearly 1 to 1.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
May 24, 2010 at 6:51 am
Heh... in fact, here's one now...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic926398-360-1.aspx
... and such a thing is far from atypical.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
May 24, 2010 at 7:13 am
ahh so true; the dba title is one you can apparently take at will; we see way to many "dba" titles around the neck of posters asking questions from Chapter 1 of Introduction to SQL for Really New Beginners Who Won't Read The Chapter.
Sort of like if you start your own one-man consulting company, you can be President, Manager, CEO, CTO, CFO or whatever title you care to wear, even though the title doesn't mean you have any competency in the typical job requirements for that title.
Besides, everyone knows Installing SQLExpress automatically bestows the title "dba" on you.
Lowell
May 24, 2010 at 9:54 am
And then you end up as a DBA in the company where they try to last for years without actual DBA. My last workplace had databases grew to 8-9 TB and no maintenance or actual backup stratagies. Total 40 TB database environments thorwn out to developers..It makes you wonder why no one values DBA job as a critical part of data systems even when they are the publicly traded companies. Then all of a sudden SOX and PCI compliance is critical and they have no more money to spend on fixing any issues. It does make you very confident DBA after fixing this mess with given resources.
In my current workplace, I am the first DBA where they have sql server for at least 11 years. 90 % of the tables have no clustered indexes. For every single little thing (even for 5 tables and no procedures ) new database was added by different developers. Anyway and then still you are assigned as a development resource ( writing procedures etc ) for 40 hours in a week leaving it upto you to do actual DBA work at your personal time expense.
Although I am happy that hiring actual DBA is the first step in the right direction. I feel for all other DBAs in the community who are asked to jump in the mud and start cleaning up. But hey, it feels good at the end of the day to actually earn the pay..
-N
May 24, 2010 at 10:02 am
I actually think it's getting better as more companies and groups realize that they ned someone to manage data and care for it.
However the number of companies, and apps being put on databases is growing quicker, so percentage wise, it might be decreasing.
But as an employee, I'm a whole number, not a percentage, so more absolute numbers is good for me.
May 24, 2010 at 10:06 am
Just wanted to add as a Newbie, you are correct. I am struggling in my company that refuses to understand the importance of a DBA. They see it all as some computer thing. They hire programmers and expect them to be DBA's. I have pressed to hire a DBA, but have been unable to convince the hire ups of the need. As a running joke we have attached the letters DBA to my name tag outside my office since all the problems basically come to my desk and to be honest I am no DBA, I am a software engineer. Problem is the difference although very large appears to be lost by the non technical (mangament) community as "computer stuff"
May 24, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Working as a consultant I see it all, and many of the companies that call for my service do so because they didn't have the money or feel the need to hire a "proper" DBA. Then the custard hit the fan and they lost $10000 of raw material on the factory floor, or lost a critical database and didn't have backups.
It's companies like this that keep people like me in work, so I don't really mind, but I do feel sorry for the poor sod who is trying to do the DBA work and then gets it in the neck when things go wrong. And it isn't his fault.
The reality is management only spend money when they can see a tangible return. And as long as the DB Server is up and running, there's no need for a DBA. As DBAs we don't really "produce" anything. Of course a recoverable, reliable, performing server isn't a commodity, it's expected.
If you are the poor sod, you need to show them the cost of losing the data, like the guy who lost a 500GB database because they "didn't have space to back it up". A good DBA is a bit like an insurance policy. Seems like a waste of good money, until things go wrong.
Leo
There are 10 types of people in the world.
Those who understand binary and and those that don't
Leo
Nothing in life is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated.
May 24, 2010 at 3:25 pm
To add insult to injury, management just took backups/restore/DR away from me on our newest production sql cluster, and handed it to an untrained Systems Team engineer using Commvault Idata agents. There have already been some interesting oops moments including a whole business day where the "every 15 minute" log backups didn't run. This guy refuses to open Management Studio because, basically, SQL isn't his job.
May 24, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Round about now I would start dusting off my CV.
Good practice has always been to do SQL Native backups to DISK, then copy to tape. I know some 3rd party systems are very good (I've used LiteSpeed a lot, but always to disk), but unless you are testing them regularly (and I recommend weekly) you are asking for trouble.
One is tempted to say "let it break" so they feel the pain, but I'd say you need to sit down with your manager and discuss the risks involved if things go wrong. And believe me there are a lot of things that can go wrong.
Managment often think a cluster is their HA and DR solution, but it's only HA, there is still a single point of failure in the SAN and they still need good DR. Also who is doing optimisation, db tuning, trouble shooting,.....
Hope it gets better
Leo
There are 10 types of people in the world.
Those who understand binary and and those that don't
Leo
Nothing in life is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated.
May 24, 2010 at 3:49 pm
CV? I raised objections when backups etc were moved to Systems -- don't feel any need ( or use ) in going further with that. As I mentioned at the top of this thread, we have DBA by committee so performance, design, maintenance jobs etc are handled by various people.
May 24, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Indianrock (5/24/2010)
CV? I raised objections when backups etc were moved to Systems -- don't feel any need ( or use ) in going further with that. As I mentioned at the top of this thread, we have DBA by committee so performance, design, maintenance jobs etc are handled by various people.
CV, because I wouldn't want to be a DBA in a company that runs it's systems like this. If no one person owns the environmnet, when things go wrong (and they will) there's just too much risk of being caught in the fireing line.
DBA by committee means there are no standards, no ownership, on responsibility, lots of risks. Not a good way to maintain the db server. I've seen a company that did this and they had serious problems before I started there. When I started, I laid down some basic rules, and dragged the developers kicking and screeming after me. When their callouts dropped from 2 a night to one a month, they decided it wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Leo
There are 10 types of people in the world.
Those who understand binary and and those that don't
Leo
Nothing in life is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated.
May 25, 2010 at 9:05 pm
"DBA's don't get no respect" as Rodney Dangerfield might say. While I think this problem is becoming better, I would like to see PASS (and perhaps even Microsoft) become more of an agent to educate companies of the benefits of having professional DBAs on their staff. At the same time, DBAs (whether accidental or full-time) need to do the best they can in order to educate their organizations of the benefits of DBAs. It's not an easy task, but a challenge we need to take more responsibility for.
Brad M. McGehee
DBA
May 25, 2010 at 11:17 pm
When you have critical servers down, the importance of a DBA becomes obvious.
We have around 500+ database servers and thousands of databases spread across many locations, so hoping for the best without DBAs is a thing of the past. They may not enjoy paying for us, but doing without is not a realistic option.
As for having windows admins doing the SQL Server backups via an agent, the attraction of that to all involved goes away fast the first time you have a windows admin spend half a day trying unsuccessfully to restore a corrupt master database while angry senior executives demand that you get their revenue generating application working NOW.
Experience is a cruel teacher, but she makes her lessons understood.
May 26, 2010 at 5:47 am
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