Welcome back to SQL Saturday blog days. There are a lot of blogs about T-SQL and SSIS and other specific SQL Server issues, but so very few blogs (if any) that talk about being a DBA. So I am going to go back to the basic basics with this post and talk about exactly that: What is a DBA?
For the longest time, “DBA” stood for “doing business as.” Database Administrator, the new meaning of “DBA,” isn’t known by a lot of people. In fact, when I tell people I’m a DBA, I’ve actually been asked “what are you doing business as?”
Well, I am doing business as a database administrator. But what exactly does a DBA do? People understand programming. They even understand networking (to some extent) and website designing, because these things impact their day-to-day life. But DBAs are the hidden IT people. Few see the database administrators, few even know about us, until something goes wrong.
So what is our super-secret job? Well, I manage information and protect data. All your banking information is held in a database. All your health information is held in a database. All your store inventory is housed in a database (even if your store is small and you’re only using an Excel spreadsheet). My job is to take that information, back it up, fix it when something is wrong with it, run jobs against that data that puts it into report databases or sends it to a corporate office, and generally make sure that the database stays up and running during business hours.
That’s just the basic job description. But SQL Server database administration has many different forms. There’s the SQL Server database developer who designs databases or writes a program to access the data. There’s the production administrator who manages security (data access), backups, jobs, and keeps the production server running. There’s the Business Intelligence specialist who writes reports, or designs cubes and ETL processes. Data Warehouse administrators and database designers are also other forms of database administration.
Database administration pays better than programming or web design, but it’s also a higher stress job. If you plan to become a DBA, I urge you not to do it for the money but do it for the enjoyment of the job. Otherwise it will burn you out very quickly and become the job you hate.
I’ll tell you one thing, though. I enjoy not being tied to a phone anymore. Even if it does mean being available on evenings and weekends to troubleshoot problems.
