• DBA is a huge job covering lots of different aspects of technology. For a good general description of the position, I'd suggest Craig Mullins book, Database Administration. It's a little old, but still shows the breadth of knowledge and the potential different positions very well. It's system agnostic and, as I said, old, so don't count on it as a mechanism for starting to learn the actual position. It just teaches about the discipline itself.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning