They aren’t. 99% of what you do could be replicated by a fairly stupid shell script.
When I started as a DBA, I didn’t have practical experience as a DBA. I had Books Online and google.
What’s necessary as a DBA has nothing to do with your knowledge of T-SQL or SQL Server’s internal fiddly bits. That’s icing on the cake.
The skills necessary to become a DBA are things that we learn over time. These are the skills and traits that make us successful professionals, students, friends, and lovers. You need patience, inquisitiveness, and a healthy dose of skepticism. You should also be able to follow a checklist. Making the checklist is for the advanced class.
The technical skills of a DBA are the same as those of a plumber – they’re both skilled trades. There are varying degrees of success and skill. You can distinguish between the skilled and unskilled very quickly by their approach to life and learning. People who are good at their job possess the skill of learning: their practical job skills themselves are secondary to their ability to learn.
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A shell script can’t do sarcasm like I can.
Your right about most of the rest, you have to want to learn and be able to apply that knowledge.
Unlike plumbers I keep my pants pulled up.
You forgot the part where we could be replaced with a wav file that says “No you can’t have access” with the follow up BSOD.
And I think we’re more like janitors than plumbers but to each their own.
Very true. And I find these skills very different from programmer skills with the very same tools. As a programmer, I need my code, my design, my ______ to work at least twice. Once that occurs I can check in the code and assume it keeps running (at least on my machine.)
DBAs have to have patience to make sure that code runs every day, rain or shine, bad server, etc etc. As a developer I try to constantly be doing something new, but as a DBA, they are constantly trying to maintain status quo, keep control, etc.
As a database developer, I think the most difficult thing to come to grips with is that I am probably the most expendable. A db without a UI is useless. A db without a dba to manage it is useless. Well, that is just a little bit depressing
Louis, I found your comment really refreshing but I have to disagree. As a DBA I’ve always been lead to believe that I am the expendable one. Operations are usually frowned upon. We may be the glue that keeps the servers running, but since I don’t generate the highly prized software, I would get the boot. New features are all the rave and the DBA doesn’t generate the new features. So I wouldn’t worry.
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