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Who Are You? (as a DBA)

  • April 24, 2003 at 12:00 am

    #58938

    Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones/whoareyouasadba.asp

  • June 12, 2003 at 1:47 am

    #460978

    Myself I'm working partly as Consultants, part trainer and sometimes also as a parttime DBA at various customer sites. First of all I must say that about every company defines the DBA position differently. I even met one cutomer who was looking for a DBA and telling me that about 80 - 90 % of the task was writing stored procedures and UDF's for new applications.

    When teaching the 2072 class (administrating sql server) where you hardly even open QA I always tell my students that EM is a good starting point, but the more experienced you get , the more they will do through QA or from the command prompt. They are much more flexible. So in my view a good DBA needs to combine 228 and 229 as well. Especially if you look what 228 exam is all about. Basically it's just security,backup and restore, some very basic DTS and a little perfomance monitoring. Nothing about replication, indexes, query tuning or database maintenance.

    But after all it's always the company and the DB environment where you're working which defines the DBA tasks. I've seen lots of smaal businesses with one SQL server and about small databases where taking backups is about everything which is done. And it works fine for them so why change it. (maybe just to earn me some extra bucks )

    [font="Verdana"]Markus Bohse[/font]

  • June 12, 2003 at 9:17 am

    #461064

    I'd have to say I fall more on the development side (229). To tell the truth, I don't consider myself a really good admin... perhaps that's laziness, or just a personal desire to be in on the creative process... or even a myopic view of DB administration. I just feel the development tasks are more rewarding.

    SJTerrill

  • June 12, 2003 at 9:47 am

    #461076

    I am one of those who did not know what 228 & 229 meant (until I read the topic further). We have 4 servers (SQL7 SP4) and I have only done a SQL 6.5 admin course. I started with databases on ICL mainframes (wow all those years ago....) and really only got into relational databases with 6.5. I do mostly dev with some admin (because no other bugger will do it). I am not certified (unless you are referring to the types of institutions with padded cells, then I certanly qualify ). I am a MCP only because I passed one exam (TCP/IP). I wished I did all the others when I had further training and tried for the MCSD. Oh! well thats life.

    Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
    Anon.

  • June 11, 2004 at 3:25 am

    #510009

    u'r right about the distinctions in the roles, I often find that in smaller environments (up to 100) there's an impression that there's no need for a dedicated dba/developer. What I have also found is that too many IT managers think the same so they end up neglecting their db admin which I think is really odd. I realise that there's a lot of pressure on them to perform, but not to notice the benefits of a properly administered db (performance monitoring, index tuning, BACKUPS!!!) just goes to enforce presumptions of sql server professionals.

    ok, maybe that was a little off the topic but even if you decide what you want to be, you still have to deal with the presumptions.

    p.s. it's always a good thing to know some programming language too, just in case you get mistaken for a programmer, doh!

    Max

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