Sue_H - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 4:55 PM

Jason Toews - Wednesday, August 23, 2017 2:12 PM

I've worked a little bit with a few production SQL databases and all of them to a fault were a MS SQL database... my understanding is that PostgreSQL is an open source alternative that is fairly robust - but I have no experience with it... if I want to do dba work in the future is PostgreSQL something that I'll need to be familiar with?

Just want to know if its wise to pick either one exclusively... with that being said I haven't worked on a software package that required PostgreSQL.

Thanks,
Jason

That's probably more complex than it seems. It's good to know other database platforms but realistically that is getting harder and harder as each platform has so many different features and functionality that it's a bit of a task to learn an entire platform and it's offerings. You already see a lot of things split with SQL Server where it can be a BI DBA, BI Developer, SQL Server DBA, SQL Server developer. And there can be significant differences between all of them based on the company. Same thing with other platforms. An Oracle DBA and an Oracle Apps DBA tend to do and need to know different things.
Some of what you may want to pursue could be based on different things. Job market for different platforms vary and can be different by location. Or you may be interesting in just being able to get DBA work of any kind so then do you want to look at who has the largest market share or do you want to focus on the ones you like the most. And market share rankings can be different as well - is it number of installations, revenue, number of applications using the platforms? Different reports rank them differently based on those and other factors.
But it can be good to play around with others as they all have strengths and weakness and operate differently. Some are relational databases, some are not. Postgres or NoSQL types would be different from SQL Server and Oracle.

So I didn't help any as I probably made it more confusing. I'd probably work at learning as much as I can about SQL Server platform if you are already there. You can create plenty of opportunities for you to pick up on different areas and it's not likely that you won't be able to find jobs in SQL Server in the near future.
I would be open to at least playing around with other platforms to see some of the differences and who knows, you may find one you really like and want to stick with. PostgreSQL isn't huge in terms of installation, revenue or applications using it. There are jobs here and then but not as many as some other database platforms. That doesn't rule it out though.

Sue