March 4, 2013 at 3:00 pm
I certainly fell into database development work. I avoided the one database course they offered at school because I couldn't stand the professor. My first job was in an Informix shop so I did a combination of front-end development and back end database work. I got my intro to databases there, eventually became an accidental DBA in that world, and that got me into my current company. This shop was, at the time, mostly SQL Server and beginning to work with Informix, so I had to get up to speed on SQL Server pretty quickly. Then the project that was Informix-based got discontinued but they kept me around since I'd become one of the senior SQL Server people on the team by that point.
I've got to say that what keeps me in SQL Server is a combination of the community and the large number of things that you can do with SQL Server. I've never worked in anything where people have gotten so excited about what they're doing, and are so welcoming to people who want to learn about it. And if I'm not interested in spending all of my time as a DBA, there's data integration, there's reporting, there are so many other things that you can focus on and you will never learn it all, and the thought of always having something new to sink my teeth into makes me extremely happy.
Jennifer Levy (@iffermonster)
March 8, 2013 at 8:06 pm
I began with SQL server 4.2, I was working for a small Services Company trying to establish themselves. My Boss was convinced by Microsoft that we should become a Microsoft Dealer and that one of the requirements was to have at least 2 MCSEs. I was fast-tracked into becoming an MCSE in 3 weeks and one of my electives was SQL Server.
My main area of employment was the IBM AS/400 with its integrated database. This is now called the IBM Power System and the database is called DB2 on i.
During this time I had various SQL Server installations to maintain. I actually used 6., 6.5 , 7, 2000.
My current company decided on a Data Warehouse which was implemented on 2000 with DTS. We also hired a real DBA.
Myself and the DBA converted the DTS to SSIS 2005 which was magic at the time. After he left I inherited the DBA Role.
I took the Data warehouse to 2008 then to 2008 R2 where it is now on a Box with lots of Memory, Cores & Disk.
I find SQL Server is now almost as robust as the IBM Power System which is a big call. The 2008 R2 has had only one outage and that was caused my a massive hardware failure ( IBM ).
I find the current SQL Server a joy to work with. My only real beef would be the question of why can't it handle Cursors properly. DB2 doesn't have any of this RBAR nonsense.
David
April 5, 2013 at 11:26 am
I first started with SQL 7, then quickly 2000 as a classic ASP developer. Made a deliberate decision to become a DBA (since I had studied normalization at university) as I wasn't interested in going down the .NET route.
Never regretted it for one minute, however I may have cursed using SQL 2K on many occasions. 😉
qh
September 30, 2013 at 12:39 pm
This topic is so interesting to me that I had to answer. I started out as a Fortran programmer & loved it. I got into Oracle Database Administration when there was no one else to do it. I have been an Oracle DBA ever since. I got into SQL Server when it first came out for the same reason. I soon decided that Oracle & SQL Server DBA work was what I enjoyed most. I have worked with every version of Oracle since version 3, and every version of SQL Server since 4.2 except for version 7.
I choose to work with Oracle & SQL Server because they are the 2 most commonly used RDBMS's. These days, one needs all the skills he can develop in order to have the best chance of findinga job should that be necessary.
I still think Oracle is the Cadillac of RDBMS's, but SQL Serve is a good, solid product. I'm glad I'm a DBA. I don't mind coming to work every day.
Best Wishes To The PASS Community
David Shink
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