RE: Dead DBA's

I have half written post called "The Rebirth of the DBA". I am not sure if it is going to make the cut. There is not enough time before I go on vacation and there is some good community discussion both in the comments and in the blogosphere(Brent O, Grant Fritchy, Pythian).

I will summarize really quick. I was halfway playing devil's advocate. While it is possible that they could write some really amazing software that could script the DBA, it is unlikely that they can totally do it. The DBA will still be around. The numbers may be less. Maybe substantially. The roles may change. Maybe drastically. Hell, your SQL Server 2015 VM may have a "cloud partition" in a physical table. There are other factors in the mix like consolidation, virtualization and LINQ\ORM that are also going to have to have an effect. It is all speculation but the only constant is change.

email it! |   |   |   |  | 

Permalink     5 Comments  

Rate this Post: 12345
COMMENTS:

As a guy who wrote a blog post titled "SQL Server 2008 Sucks", I officially give you permission to play devil's advocate as often as possible. :-D

posted @ Friday, August 01, 2008 2:17 PM by Brent O.

---

Hi!
I agree that DBA's role is not going to disappear anytime soon.

While some ORM-tools, LINQ etc can generate quite decent SQL, I wouldn't trust on them in more demanding queries like searches, complicated reports etc. They require so much fine tuning of queries, indexes and partitions when there is lot's of data.

Then there is the IT-pro -side of installing, maintaining, backing up. These won't happen by itself.

I may be more of developer/architect kind of guy, but I always try keep my db-skills up to date to make sure that the database is not the bottleneck.

posted @ Friday, August 01, 2008 2:23 PM by Jemm

---

I think you're right to bring visibility even if you feel DBAs aren't going the way of the punch card operator. Let's face it, cloud computing has been at the fringes for a while, but companies who have been more traditional in IT approach like Sun (even if they had a "grid" in 2000) are making a hard play at it.

It will be interesting to see where this ride takes us. It wasn't too long ago that DBAs weren't concerned about VB or C++ code much. Now, with CLR, more DBAs are having to pay attention and that means learning VB.NET and C#. LINQ has brought its own visibility. So the role of the DBA, at least the SQL Server DBA, is in flux and has been for a few years now.

posted @ Friday, August 01, 2008 4:12 PM by K. Brian Kelley

---

"DBA's"?

Please read:

http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

posted @ Saturday, August 02, 2008 11:40 AM by Apostrophe Protection Society

---

A real gramm'r nazi would know DBA's is an has contraction. I sez it so.

posted @ Sunday, August 03, 2008 11:29 PM by J'a's'o'n'

---

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

Simple BBCode can be used like [URL]...[/URL] and [B]