Are you a 229 or a 228?
Which is it? Are you more of a 229 kind DBA or a 228?
You might look a little confused by now. Probably shaking your head wondering if Steve has lost it after too many years with SQL Server. While that may be true, there is a little method to my madness.
Know what 228 and 229 are? They are the numbers of the SQL 2000 exams from Microsoft. If you're certified, that makes sense. If not, the 228 exam is the Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition and the 229 exam is Designing and Implementing Databases with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition.
So what am I driving at? Well, most of us probably perform some mix of both jobs. I know I do though I do way more administration. Recently I took a DB2 class and one of the things that I learned about myself is while I worked through the admin tasks on the server, I ran through the developer type tasks, creating tables, querying, inserting data, much quicker and more naturally. It felt smoother in an unfamiliar system. Even though most of my work was done at the command line, the DML and DDL were much more natural to me than the admin tasks.
And I do admin tasks with the command line all the time, net commands, various utilities, etc.
I enjoy administering servers, solving problems, etc, and that's most of my job, but one thing that I really learned about myself recently is that I seem to take to the developer tasks and enjoy them much more. Now I'm not switching jobs; I like my job and there are lots of nice benefits, plus I do get to do some development. I'm not trying to tell you which job you should do, but pointing out that you'll have an interest in one area more than the other and you should pay attention to that when you are looking for a job, or a project.
So which are you?
A 228 or a 229?
Steve Jones
©dkRanch.net May 2003
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