(looks like the newsletter is delayed today)
The key is calibrating the answer to the asker. Explaining what I do to my Mom is different than explaining it to my new colleague.
When talking with strangers or filling out a credit app or my tax forms, I say that I'm a computer programmer. When talking to computer people, I tell them I'm a database guy. If they want to get in to deeper detail, I'll mention SQL Server and administrator.
In the past 20+ years, I was 80-90% DBA, 10-20% database developer. On the DBA side I would monitor backups and DBCCs, take care of problems for both, monitor disk space, work with security, etc. I'd also write reporting or query systems when the canned apps didn't support them, thus the developer part. I've never worked in a shop that had an actual developer staff, much less testing/QA/UAT.
Current job is almost 100% developer, so I guess I'm back to being a programmer. I'm solo developing a very specialized student information system with the data repository in SQL Server and the front end in Access. It works well as I'm used to most of the quirks of Access, having used it since 1.0. Theoretically I'll gain access to our existing SQL Servers at some point as they've never had a DBA (they've all been vendor "supported"): I expect interesting times when I start digging in to those.
The realms that I haven't worked in as a DBA are mainly HA/DR and BI/Warehousing.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]