Do You Need an IT or CS Degree to be a Successful DBA?
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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Do You Need an IT or CS Degree to be a Successful DBA?
Brad M. McGehee
DBA -
Nope, just some curiosity, perfectionist tendencies and persistence are required in my mind to be a good dba. I have a BA in Econ and Finance and a PhD in International Trade and got started in the tech world because I was:
1. always managing the data for other research projects,
2. always trying to write something new and faster so I could get my research numbers
3. wrote several programs for friends in the business/legal world
I have only had one formal technology class (Data Warehousing by Kiimball University) and picked up everything else with persistence and hard work (and loving every minute of it). As my dad said, computers are to this generation what muscle cars were to his...a place to tinker and learn.
Yes, my business background makes a big difference. When I talk with Sr. Management and I jump in on discussions on things like ROI (return on investment), RCA (root cause analysis), Depreciation, Six Sigma....that builds rapport real quick. They understand that I understand their world and has helped me get the resources I needed.
Thanks!
SJ
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Two degrees: Chemistry and MIS. One science, one business. Both almost as useless as tits on a mule in the SQL space. The education allowed me to fill someone's graduate quota at a behemoth services company. I would say the name but I might spontaneously combust. Basically, my degree qualified me to be a suitable corporate drone. My DBA and SQL skills were honed on-the-job and in my own time.
James Stover, McDBA -
I'd like to know why anyone cares? Either the DBA is doing (or can do) a good job or not. When I conduct an interview for a potential DBA or Developer, the first thing I do to the resume is black ink over any letters after the person's name.
In casual conversations such as what you say you have, I'm still not interested in someone's educational pedigree. Rather, I'm interested in their trials and tribulations as a DBA and, perhaps, any tricks of the trade they may care to share.
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally) -
I've got a BS and half a masters degree in political science. Dropped out of grad school after doing research into payscale potential post-graduation compared with the technical contract work that I was doing to pay for grad school (with an eye toward law school thereafter). Decided that I didn't want to take the pay cut necessary to be a professor and that I'd rather be able to sleep at night than be an attorney... so software construction and database wrangling it is!!
😀
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I have an accounting degree and passed the CPA exam. Worked as an accountant who knew computers, and discovered that relational database concepts were obvious. I've switched between accounting and systems for 20 years. I'm not really a DBA, but DBA skills are vital to what I do.
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I have a bachelor in clinical chemistry and when I was working I started new studies in evening course and weekend courses and thus I became a bachelor in informatics.
My first study helped me to implement laboratory software.
But as it comes to it, practical experience is more important than the degree. I guess for informatics, some logical thinking is handy.
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I haven't got a degree.
I fell into becoming a DBA through an interest in statistics in relation to predicting future customer behaviour from past behaviour.
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BSc in Economics, A-Levels in IT, Business Studies and Economics.
Joined a small company in a non IT capacity - spent a small amount of time on small problems - as staff count increased time spent on IT increased until I was a full time systems administrator and 'SQL person' lol
I am keen to certify these skills though, just not sure which course I should choose etc.
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Personnally I have a computer science degree taken in the 1970's when they weren't very common. When I started with a software house as one of the new graduate intake, there were three of us with computing degrees out of about 15 to 20 graduates, so we fast tracked onto projects staraight away whilst the rest got training. Music graduates were sought after for computer jobs as they were reckoned to have the right sort of semi-mathematical, pattern analysing mind.
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I have an MSc in Tropical Forestry. After putting 4000 trees into a database - their data, I didn't cut them down 🙂 - I started programming. The advantage of my study is, that it adds another perspective to the time dimension. In forestry long term = 60-80 years and short term = 20 years. Talk to any economist, and long term = 1-3 years, while short term = next month or even tomorrow. As temporary solutions usually end up being critical core applications, I tend to enlarge the life cycle of any new application proposal to at least a few years and ask the client: where do you think you and your company will be five years from now?
Bram Laumans
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Hi,
I have a degree in Civil Engineering...bridges, roads, dams...all that sort of stuff.
As the editorial suggests I did have a deep rooted interest in IT...
I grew up with MD DOS 2.1 onwards and making games work by changing config.sys and autoexec.bat...remember loadhigh...man that takes me back.
I used Supercalc 5 to calculate my surveying traverses...not bad if I don't say so myself.
I then got a job as a computer technician in a college...with no formal IT training. Then started to use Access to manage assets and room allocations. Then I moved on to the big boys toy..SQL.
Started with SQL 7 in a firm of accountants. I now find my self as Database Manager looking after sites in 3 countries running SQL 2000/2008.
So my degree is totally unrelated and I do agree with the post that if the person can do the job, that means more than the letters after their name.
Take it easy
Graeme
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No degree, my tertiary training was a chef. After seven years in the catering world (I was never going to be Marco Pierre White, he was a hero of mine then but this Hell's kitchen nonsense leaves a bad taste in my mouth...) I found myself in between jobs working on a support helpdesk and it sort of progressed from there. Various training courses and on the job training plus a lot of out of hours reading to get here.
I'd like to think a degree or lack of one should make no difference unless you are hiring straight out of university. If you were looking at my cv then my degree would have been 14 years ago so I think would have little relevance to my current abilities. If my lack of degree means you discard my application then I believe that is a shortsighted loss.
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BS Applied Physics. One year preparatory for MS Actuarial Science. In that time, I was doing the graduate student database program, something new.
I had three courses related to programming but RDBMS was something I had to look around the libraries for. And the libraries were so outdated, in one book, linking tables was still a theory...not much computer books also. The help file was not comprehensive.
It was as good as programming by imagination. I remembered praying a lot that the system would not crash after compiling, that it could get the correct data in the dbf files, etc. etc. I prayed a lot. Ordinary people started praying when plug-and-play came in.
The course I graduated in, BSAP, helped in the sense of analytical thinking and intuition. Also, those many desperate times which build character, like how to calculate this, prove this theorem, etc. the lesson being, its not how many times you fail but how many times you keep on getting up and still going.
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Brad,
A.S. in Electronic engineering,
BS in comp sci
MS in comp sci,
MS Certified in SQL 6.5 through 2008
But that said it really doesn't matter... I started out writing assembly code for microcontrollers, moved into software development (in the dos world, C, pascal, vb) then moved to windows... worked w DBase, RBase, Oracle - ended up landing as a SQL Server DBA because no one else knew as much about the DB's in the places I've worked.
I've honed and developed my skills along the way, I think as a successful DBA it's more important to keep learning, as the software we use keeps changing!
Having worked as a Network Engineer and a developer, I think those skills help as well
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