April 29, 2011 at 8:46 am
Eric M Russell (4/29/2011)
geert.bens (4/29/2011)
I would like to see developpers and DBA's in thought of building a house. the developper is the constructor, the DBA responsible for the fundations and construction plan . . .I'd equate database developers to the guys who build the foundation, framework, and roof for the building.
This picture misses security. If the data is compromised, it is the DBA who gets slammed -- it is his (or rarely her) responsibility.
April 29, 2011 at 9:00 am
Revenant (4/29/2011)
Eric M Russell (4/29/2011)
geert.bens (4/29/2011)
I would like to see developpers and DBA's in thought of building a house. the developper is the constructor, the DBA responsible for the fundations and construction plan . . .I'd equate database developers to the guys who build the foundation, framework, and roof for the building.
This picture misses security. If the data is compromised, it is the DBA who gets slammed -- it is his (or rarely her) responsibility.
In my earlier post I mentioned the role of security as belonging to the DBA crew.
DBAs are like the maintenance and security crew who keep everything clean, safe, and in functional order.
Of course design flaws created by the database and application developers can introduce security issues as well. For example, SQL injection or improperly filtered datasets.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
April 29, 2011 at 11:54 am
Eric M Russell (4/29/2011)
In my earlier post I mentioned the role of security as belonging to the DBA crew.
DBAs are like the maintenance and security crew who keep everything clean, safe, and in functional order.
Of course design flaws created by the database and application developers can introduce security issues as well. For example, SQL injection or improperly filtered datasets.
I missed the connection to your previous post - sorry.
April 29, 2011 at 2:52 pm
Steve,
I've encountered many business scenarios where a DBA is the last employee considered for hiring. The primary reason, from what I've experienced, is that many managers and software engineers simply assume that databases and database servers do not require tuning or maintenance. I'm not certain why that attitude is so prevalent. I've seen it in little companies. I've seen it in a Fortune 70 company.
One manager asked me, "Why do databases require maintenance? Why don't they just work?" I gave an honest, straightforward, 2 minute answer and his eyes glazed over. It simply wasn't the answer he wanted to hear.
From my experience, a DBA is often not hired until a database server is "on fire". At that point, it doesn't have one problem, it has 50, and it takes time to put the "fires" out. At first, the DBA, either employee or contractor, is greatly appreciated. But, over the weeks and months of fixing, enhancing, and tuning to get things under control, and as everything starts to smooth out, the question, "Do we really need a DBA?" starts to creep back into the picture.
Full-time employees are expensive. Competent, knowledgeable DBA's are even more expensive. I suggest that little companies consider hiring a DBA as a contractor for a few hours per week, to maintain their server(s). This would serve their interests and it would server the interests of DBA's who want contract work.
LC
May 2, 2011 at 11:08 am
This kind of discussion comes up a lot. Who should know what. I like to think of the IT industry as a young medical industry. Sure at first everyone did everything, but over time the wealth of knowledge and application grow to the point you must have specialists to get anything done right. I don't think anyone here would want their general practitioner performing their foot surgery, or a foot surgeon diagnosing their lung issues. In my experience, the same can be said for development and DBA work. I don't want a developer setting up my failover clusters, data warehouse partitioned table backups (under tight performance requirements), etc; just as I wouldn't want a DBA writing the code for my application thin client handling 1000 transactions per hour, etc.
Expecting an employee to be an expert at .NET or some other similarly complicated and multi-faceted programming platform as well as be an expert in all things DBA (let alone DB developer and/or BI expert) is just rediculous. The tech has grown so thick it has created the need for distinct specialists, obviously depending on the size of your company and ambitions.
If you're still not sold, ask one of your C# guys what are the differences when considering mirroring or failover clustering when you need a hot standby. I think very few of them, if any, could answer. There are a ton more questions like this I wouldn't expect most developers to know, simply because their field of expertise is not databases. Same in reverse.
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May 2, 2011 at 11:33 am
crainlee2 (4/29/2011)
Steve,From my experience, a DBA is often not hired until a database server is "on fire". At that point, it doesn't have one problem, it has 50, and it takes time to put the "fires" out. At first, the DBA, either employee or contractor, is greatly appreciated. But, over the weeks and months of fixing, enhancing, and tuning to get things under control, and as everything starts to smooth out, the question, "Do we really need a DBA?" starts to creep back into the picture.
LC
AMEN to that..it gets rather tiring to be full time fire fighters though...most companies are outsourcing their software/dbs though, thati s today's biggest challenge..where i work 3 apps/development teams that existed and were super busy just 4 years ago are gone now, we get to keep our data center and hosting the servers but the tuning work is pretty much third party, makes our job as DBAs purely operational. Some shops have outsourced servers as well and disbanded their data centers with staff too. I would suggest the next big place for DBAs to find creative work is probably hosting centers as opposed to big companies.
May 2, 2011 at 11:52 am
dma-669038 (5/2/2011)
. . . I would suggest the next big place for DBAs to find creative work is probably hosting centers as opposed to big companies.
All hosting centers I know are big companies, at least in that that they have lots of DBAs and will pigeon-hole you. IMO they are not an option for some who wants to be a well-rounded generalist.
May 2, 2011 at 11:56 am
Where do you think those of us who are victims to this outsourcing stuff can go? When there is a clear separation of operational duties versus tuning and other more involved work people have to make a choice of where you get more of the latter, sometimes it is outsourcing companies.
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