Hi Mark,

I made the transition myself a couple of years ago without too much trouble. In '98 and '99 I did systems administration for the AF and for BellSouth's Yellow Pages group. Within a year I had transitioned to being a DBA at a new place of employment. I must say that I enjoy being a DBA. The big question is do you enjoy the DBA type work you've done so far? In my case the answer was a definite yes.

My DBA duties have used the skills I developed as a sysadmin and also a programmer, with my programming experience helping in the T-SQL department and with my sysadmin knowledge helping in troubleshooting issues that are permissions or OS related problems. As a result, I found being a DBA a good fit... however, I do know of others with similar backgrounds who didn't feel the same way. Ultimately, it came down to what each of us wanted to do most. I went to being a DBA (though I'm now switching back to systems to meet a need with my organization), another went to be a senior n-tier developer, another headed up the ranks of management, and the last one I know of went back to watching his servers.

We all went to what we loved most. Sounds like you are in a similar position. Keep in mind that even if you transition to being a DBA, your Server/Network experience will get called upon, so you won't be leaving those skills behind.

K. Brian Kelley

bk@warpdrivedesign.org

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/bkelley/