December 2, 2008 at 11:15 am
It is like the historical food production and distribution. As food production and distribution techniques improved, less farmers were needed.
That is kind of what I meant. The DBA role that you have right now may be able to be reproduced with fewer warm bodies and your role may change.
The DBA of tomorrow will be doing different tasks. The tasks that are more routine may be taken over by someone that is more like a system administrator because the technology will allow people with a non-DBA background to perform these tasks reliably without needing to know the in-depth information that a DBA knows now.
The DBA of tomorrow may be doing more 'business intelligence' and less 'administrative' database work.
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
December 2, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I don't think the role of DBA is going away, but it is evolving. I remember attending a PASS seminar a couple years ago and Kalen Delaney said right up front that she is very intimate with indexes, tuning, etc., but just doesn't have the time to get up to speed on SSIS, analysis services, etc. I think we all are in that boat.
The other part of the problem is that you get what you pay for. That are many individuals (some I have interviewed) that call themselves DBAs, but know little in that way of maintaining multiple servers/databases. Right now I am in a developer role, but assist our one (and only) DBA who is more interested in Oracle, but has to keep our OLTP and OLAP servers in SQL Server going.
I turn 65 next year and am going strong. Right now I am not worried about continuing to work for the next several years.
Mike Byrd
Senior Database Developer
Mike Byrd
December 2, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Bob Abernethy (12/2/2008)
When asked what made him such an exceptional hockey player, Wayne Gretzky said that most players moved to where the puck was, and he moved to where the puck was going to be.
Most DBAs do normal DBA tasks/follow the puck. Exceptional DBAs (Wayne Gretzky type) go beyond those routines. Inventors throw the puck for people to chase.
Most of DBAs can go towards Exceptional DBA (Brad McGehee’s ebook) to add more values to wherever s/he is. DBA job may be just a starting point and a good starting point.
December 3, 2008 at 7:31 am
The company I currently work for, when I arrived a little over a year ago, had the IS manager operating as the DBA when he had time for it.
Backups were being done onto the same RAID-5 array (single "drive letter") as the data files and the log files, and all that was being done was daily full backups of a few key databases. (These were moved to tape and taken off-site the following day in each case.)
Indexes had not, so far as I could tell, ever been reorganized or rebuilt, nor analyzed for actual usefulness. One table had 25 indexes on it, with 20 columns in the table.
There was a UDF that used six nested cursors, and called itself recursively.
Dozens of tables had foreign key columns, but there wasn't a single foreign key constraint in the database.
There were four "many-to-many" tables without primary keys or clustered indexes or any constraints at all.
There were at least two tables that violated 1NF.
Performance was ... non-optimum, and errors were common, but it was "good enough" and the company's managers, while a little frustrated, weren't so bothered by it that they felt a need to make heads roll or anything like that. It was being absorbed as part of the cost of doing business.
All of these issues have now been fixed, and performance is much, much better and errors are quite rare.
Automatic maintenance has been set up and is doing a good job of keeping performance well-tuned.
The company is too small to "need" a DBA. But it sure benefited from one.
Thus, I don't see the need/benefit going away any time soon. What I see is more of the routine stuff being automated/outsourced, while the business-specific stuff will be more and more important.
The job will be less and less about routine server maintenance, and more about database architecture, performance analysis, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and analysis of business needs. Recommendations on server hardware will still be needed, for example, but tuning the system to take best advantage of the hardware chosen will be less and less critical and require less expertise and time. Designing a standard for table and column naming conventions will still be needed, but I could easily see a system self-analyzing and suggesting useful FK constraints all on its own. And so on.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
December 3, 2008 at 7:48 am
Vivien Xing (12/2/2008)
Most of DBAs can go towards Exceptional DBA (Brad McGehee’s ebook) to add more values to wherever s/he is. DBA job may be just a starting point and a good starting point.
Do you know where I could obtain this book? It's apparently a limited release and I cannot find it.
December 3, 2008 at 7:56 am
It's an ebook and Simple Talk was distributing it. Drop a PM/mail to Tony Davis (here or over at simple talk) and ask.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
December 3, 2008 at 10:47 am
Nicholas Cain (12/3/2008)
Do you know where I could obtain this book? It's apparently a limited release and I cannot find it.
How to Become an Exceptional DBA
https://www.red-gate.com/dynamic/downloads/downloadform.aspx?download=sqlbackuppro
December 3, 2008 at 11:54 pm
GilaMonster (12/2/2008)
The DBA job is broadening, for sure, but going away? I doubt it.
I completely agree with Gail. My job title is DBA, but I automated most of the routine maintenance and monitoring. Now I spend some time fixing things when the automated procedures notify me there is a problem, but my job also includes development in T-SQL and even occasionally C#, working closely with developers on new development, and even some management responsibilities with more junior T-sql developers.
The job definition may change slightly with time, but I think it will be a long time if ever that DBAs become obsolete.
---
Timothy A Wiseman
SQL Blog: http://timothyawiseman.wordpress.com/
December 4, 2008 at 11:29 am
I think we might get more specialized as data people, but the job isn't going away for sure.
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