Excellent Article.

I totaly agree with your article. I am happy that you covered the importance of scripting languages and the importance of understanding the SQL-DMO model. One of the future challenges that I see future DBA's having to tackle is the CLR runtime support in SQL Server 2005 and Oracle 10g. It is important for a DBA to have at least a basic programming background. I made the transition from Programmer to DBA a long time ago. I have still kept up with my programming skills and incorporated them into my DBA skills. It has saved me a lot of time and it also gives me a better understanding of how applications touch the database.

Another Important topic you covered is Database Documentation and Data Model change control. This is a must.