Interesting article!

Just talking about automation and the pros and cons with staff here. I believe as long as you fully understand what you are automating then go ahead automate it! By automating DBA functions you show your employer that you can provide value added and it looks good on your resume too.

With automation of tasks and functions you are then free to dive deeper into your environment and learn more interesting functions of the database technology.

Here is my example. I have created and automated reporting system the collects all types of information from all our SQL servers (production, development, UAT and disaster recovery site) which includes jobs status, versions, editions, licenses of third party products and SQL server services status just to name a few. My boss was so impressed that he convinced the director to allow me to go to the DevConnections conference last year in Florida. Now, this is a big thing because our company never does that sort of thing. Anyway, my point is with the basics covered with automation I had time to fully automate our disaster recovery site. That was fun, succesful and I learn a lot about replication. This too looks good on my resume.

With automated tasks, your job becomes more interesting, you learn a lot more about your environment and you now have time to learn more about technology thus making you a more valueable to the company.

If you are worrried about your job, then you are already one foot out the door. If that's the case, automate tasks and show them off and you will be surprised at what you learn.

Finally created reports that show management that you also collecting stats like number of SQL servers, number of jobs your system have executed and the percentage of successful jobs. Management loves numbers and graphs, this too will make you look like a star.

Just my 2 bytes worth 🙂

Thanks,

Rudy