Are DBAs Dummies?
After posting the introductory entry to my blog, I was discussing the changing role of the DBA in a recent online conversation with a colleague of mine in Australia (Hi, Dave… if you are reading feel free to add your comments in the space provided below). His belief is that there has been a “dumbing down of the DBA” as of late. The idea intrigued me so I thought I’d share it with everyone.
In my original entry I stated that “The DBA must possess a mixture of technical expertise, political savvy, leadership and business knowledge to succeed.” My colleague’s thoughts were that that used to be the case, and might still be in very large organizations, but not necessarily in small to medium sized companies. He says that more and more he sees smaller organizations where the DBA is an employee who can run setup.exe and then create a few tables, with little idea of data analysis, application design, performance management, standards, etc.
I think he is on to something there. We might have a case of simultaneous, diverging trends – where the DBA is the jack-of-all-trades and master-of-many in large organizations, but at small organizations the DBA is almost a non-entity. Either one of the programmers does the database design and administration, or the system administrator is the pseudo-DBA, installing the DBMS and doing almost nothing else.
One of the things we talked about was the cavalcade of new functionality that is introduced with each new version of the DBMS. But how much of it actually gets implemented? Having no dedicated DBA group can exacerbate this lack of exploiting new features. The DBA must be available to act as a conduit for information and education to flow to the developers who are actually writing the SQL. Without this, new features are likely to languish on the shelf because no one has the time or inclination to unwrap the features and introduce them to the database users.
What about it? How are things handled at your organization? What size is your company and how many dedicated DBAs do you have? Or if you don’t have full-time DBAs on staff, then who does the DBA work? And how up-to-date are you? Are you running the latest version of the DBMS? And are you using all of those latest and greatest features and functions?
I guess I’m asking you to answer the question implied by the title of this blog posting: are DBAs dummies?
The issue is much more complex
My career as an Oracle instructor has provided me with the good fortune of meeting hundreds, if not thousands, of budding DBAs. They came from all facets of the economy, from manufacturing to bio-tech, from single DBA shops to companies having dozens of DBAs on staff.
I could quickly tell which students were going to aggressively administer their databases and fully exploit as many new features as they could. These were the students that made me want to be an Oracle instructor, made me want to work the 12 hour days and put up with students that I knew would never do anything more than what was required to keep their databases running.
It didn't make a difference if they were part-time DBAs. I met folks that were operating system admins, LAN administrators and dozens of developers that were also going to be DBAs. It didn't make a difference how busy they were at their primary profession, these folks were excited about technology in general and wanted to be good (I should say great) DBAs.
The competitive environment forces companies to leverage new features and new technologies. Companies that don't quickly find themselves losing market share to their competitors that do. We as technicians understand this. The business community now understands that they must do everything well (including the implementation of technology)to survive.
Think about the competitive environment we live in. We have automotive manufacturers offering credit cards, supermarkets selling gas (my own company, Giant Eagle, for one) and Walmart competing with EVERYONE.
I have sat back and listened to various industry pundits proclaim that the next release of so-and-so database was going to no longer require DBAs for support. Bull. I knew it was bull then, it is bull now and it will be bull in the future. Database companies know that they must add new features to be competitive. Every new release contains so many new features that I feel like I have to learn to support the database all over again (which is why I like this job, by the way). Oracle10G allows us to administer disk, lash multiple computers together to enable grid computing and the list goes on, and on, and on.... It took me four different articles to cover just a subset of the new features available in Oracle's latest release.
My unit also supports Microsoft databases. Does anyone actually think that the Microsoft database is so easily supported that it doesn't need DBAs? Microsoft, like all database vendors knows it must incorporate new features into the database that technicians WANT TO IMPLEMENT. Adding new features makes the database inherently more complex.
The database may become easier to administer in some areas, but there are so many new features being incorporated into the products that administrative duties are just migrated to other areas. Oracle ASM now allows me to administer my own disk. How many Oracle DBAs could have predicted that they would have the capability to admininster their own disk storage subsystems? Can anyone of us predict what IBM, Oracle and Microsoft have up their sleeves in their next "latest and greatest" release. Not me. But THAT is what makes this job exciting.
A dba is not a dummy, a dba just tries to live up to the expectation.
In a large operation a dba might be a specialist in one role and a dummy in another. In a small operation he might be a dummy in perspective to the specialist. But in every way the organisation will get what it deserves.
A dba is not a dummy, a dba just tries to live up to the expectation.
Regards,
Jaap
Long answer/opinion: With the advent of object-oriented programming, integrated software development tools, distributed computing, and relational DBMSs as the de facto corporate standard, I see a shift in the way that management perceives the "database administrator" and, hence, the way that human resources defines job titles.
The DBAs of yesteryear (i.e., 10 years ago) weren't dumb, and haven't become dumber; rather, recent years have seen an influx of new talent to support purchased software packages and distributed applications. This new talent has different skill sets than the "classic" DBA. They don't have our depth of experience, and don't share our broad knowledge base.
One might argue (I do) that they should not be called DBAs at all! Still, they "administer corporate data", and companies confer the DBA title upon them.
In summary: DBAs aren't getting dumber; instead, the ranks of DBAs are being watered down by less-experienced, less-skilled, younger workers. Why do companies allow this? For the best reason possible -- they can get the job done!