I'm a trained minister. Does that count as "cross training?" (drum-roll please!)

As far as DBAing goes, I'm not sure there's a solid line between "training" and "cross-training" without going completely outside the realm of IT, and even there it gets fuzzy at times.

Knowing how your I/O channels work; how your SAN is configured (and how it should be configured - not necessarily the same thing); how your backups are being stored; how connections from the web servers are being done (pooling, ANSI settings, transaction management, et al); even how code is being written (SQL injection anyone?); and the differences you'll see between a dedicated source-agnostic DAL, a database API in the stored procedures layer, and inline SQL work, as well as mixed variations thereof; are all imporant things for a DBA to know. So does that mean you need to know at least a bit of software development, and is that "training" or "cross-training" if you do?

A bit more extreme: Do you need to know how the business defines its data, as opposed to how database schemas define it? I'd say that would be useful, since it will impact database use. So does training in the departments with end users count as "training" in that case?

How about legal issues? Does training on the subject of credit card security in a database count as training, or as cross-training? It's a legal issue, not a technical one. Same for various other compliance issues. Sarbanex-Oxley impact on data retention - training or cross?

All of those things impact my job as a DBA. My whole job exists to support the business. I have no purpose as a DBA if my servers and databases aren't helping the business cut costs and increase income, remain legally compliant, et al. So training in anything that supports that seems a bit more direct to me.