As a developer who has been given the role of DBA in the past the first thing I made very clear to my new job is that I am not a DBA I may know a fair bit about SQL server but I am not a DBA and nor do I want to be one.

I am very keen on doing things properly and have worked in environments both with and without DBA's I must say the one with the DBA wins every time.

I left my last job because I was never allowed to improve anything because that wasn't seen as being profitable they just wantedmud slung at the problem and hope that it stuck. They would spend more upgrading the servers or constantly doing things like splitting databases over different raid controllers to improve disk performance.

Why was the disk performance so poor because the code was utter rubbish. Every time I suggested tuning any of the stored procs I was met with a stern no just fix the bug don't tune anything. 90% of the bugs were performance problems!! It was like a brick wall I would have given alot for a DBA to back me up!!

Anyway now I am back to the safety of code. I do try and find best practice at all times using design patterns for my OO code and try my best to optimise my SQL. I admit I don't know all the answers always admit this to my management and always show a willingness to learn this is the only way I can get better and I will.