Beyond a DBA…

Ever since becoming an Oracle DBA late last year, it has been a constant quest to understand what truly is a DBA. It is not that I do not know what I am doing or what’s required for my job, but to truly appreciate the many facets might take some time for a newcomer:

• what a DBA does, the skillsets and traits, roles and responsibilities
• where they sit in the organization,
• how to work with different departments
• career path, progression
• the technology itself – 9i, 10g, 11g….
• tools and processes
• many more…

Mike Ault wrote an article on How to be hired as DBA, and briefly, he summarizes DBA knowledge into categories:

• Installation
• Configuration Management
• Security
• Monitoring and Tuning
• Backup and Recovery
• Troubleshooting
• Vendor Interface

He also listed the desired traits of a DBA, which I won’t repeat here. I like his expression of “database baby-sitter” and “full-charged DBA”. The article was written in 1997 (as dated in the Microsoft doc).

Craig Mullins also wrote an article on What is a DBA? He summaries the types of DBAs into:

• System DBA
• Database Architect
• Database Analyst
• Data Modeler
• Application DBA
• Task-oriented DBA
• Performance Analyst
• Data Warehouse Administrator

The article looks to be written in 2002. I believe these types take different specialization into the different database knowledge such as those mentioned by Mike. Craig explains what each types of DBA focuses on in his article nevertheless.

John Bostick has written a recent article titled DBAs fishing for an elevated role. John suggests the many tasks a DBA performs regularly are operational roles. It doesn’t seems as though John draws distinction between the different types of DBA such as those put forward by Craig.

Roles such as Database Architect, Data Modeler or Data Warehouse Administrator are beyond operations. DA and DM are roles that work closely with the development team, offering in-depth database knowledge and best practices.

However, I like what John proposes at the ending paragraphs, to paraphrase –

“… DBAs have a chance to take on a more strategic role within the organization…”, 

“… determine which of this data is most important to the business and how to extract it in a way that is actionable…”

“… turning the data into information that helps move the sales needle…”

“Pooling and parsing the data to show patterns and trends that help the organization make critical decisions…”

Although John did not give a name for this role, it sounds somewhat closely related to what (Craig describes as) a Data Warehouse Administrator (DWA) does. The small difference lies in that a DWA “monitors and supports” the data warehouse environment – database design, ETL, data quality, data formats, interface with BI tools… etc. Whilst John’s idea is for a DBA to turn the data into information to add value the business.

An experienced DBA understands the database technologies available,  understand data models/schemas/metadata, understands and can improve database performance, perform query tuning… etc. It would be a lot more interesting to be a DBA that combine these technical knowledge/skills with soft/business skills, and explore the realm of Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse, Data Mining… etc.

I like where that’s heading and it’s definitely an interesting career path to follow…

[edit] Also found an article written by Doug Burns on “What use is a Development DBA?”. Similar if not the same as the Application DBA Craig wrote about.