• I tend to agree, Tim. Perhaps it's a matter of scale. In a large organization with a large DBA staff, perhaps a highly skilled DBA with an MBA who understands the business flows, that person could be valuable as a DBAA. That person would also be a prime candidate for Senior/Lead DBA. But in smaller organizations, I think it is frequently going to be incumbent upon the DBA or the senior application developer to learn those flows.

    A lot depends on separation of duties. I am THE DBA for a city. Sounds lofty until you drill down to the city having less than 1200 employees, the IT department having maybe 60 employees, and I'm the only DBA. I'm also not an application developer, there are people who have been here for 10+ years who understand how the City work processes flow. I mainly need to know if the database needs to be 24/7 or banker's hours and whether or not it has any external input/output (DTS). Aside from that, I manage the server and coordinate with the network guys for backups.

    If I were the senior DBAA for a State, it would be a different story. I don't think it would be possible for one person to know the business functions and flows of all areas, it's just too diversified. For such an organization you'd probably want a DBAA in each division of government, but knowing how government is funded, I don't think that you could afford it.

    Scale. That's what's important. Which reminds me, I need to clean my bathtub.

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]