January 5, 2009 at 9:01 am
I don't think I'm selling things short. DBAs do a lot of tuning and moving data around. It depends on your job and things I've done heavily in one job, I've rarely done in others. And vice versa.
There are mechanics that just change oil, and there are those that tune engines to reach new levels of performance. A DBA could fall into either category, with most of us in between.
January 5, 2009 at 9:24 am
I agree. It is somewhat of a short sell of a DBA, which is why we are often written off as mere 'techies' and 'kept out of the way'.
I wrote before that you don't need industry expertise to get the job, but once it's in the bag, you should learn what you
need to about the business, because then you can really add value and become a major player within the business, which IMHO DBAs should be.
You can find out a lot about the business from the data and metadata in the database(s) and use it to help the business, for example in forecasting business growth.
I did some work for a mobile phone operator. They experienced an explosion of growth in one specific area. The data illustrating the transaction growth rate was held in a couple of tables. I was able to plot the growth curve and use it to forecast growth over the following 12 months, which turned out to be more accurate than the marketing department's own forecasts. The direct result was they were able to plan major changes to their systems to cope with this growth, before it swamped them.
This is just one example. The deeper you go into your customer's business and the data behind it, the more value you can add and the more interesting the job becomes.
Howard
January 8, 2009 at 10:29 am
You WILL learn about the industry in which you're working, you don't have much of a choice. Having previous industry experience really depends, and always, if the employer says you need it, then you need it. You might be able to do some research and get through the interview like Jeff did, you never know.
I have experience in the following industries: Medicare/Medicade management, education management, law enforcement, municipal government, medical/taxi transport. And a few others that I can't think of off-hand. But I didn't have experience in any of these before I started the job, just good IT skills and experience.
I've always been an advocate that when you start out in IT that you should never stay more than 3-5 years in any given job, you should move between industries and job types to get a better feel for the industry and job that you want to do long-term. Settle down after 10-15 years and grind out that pension. Broader experience will certainly help, a previous boss was impressed that I was an amateur radio operator as it was a taxi/transport company and they use radio heavily.
As a DBA, learning your company at a meta-level can have unexpected benefits. When I was working in law enforcement, I had a project with an investigative group that were going after staged traffic accidents that were defrauding insurance companies and causing lots of injuries, and occasionally, fatalities (the scam was started by the Russian Mafia, believe it or not). I worked with them on their surveillance database where they recorded license plates of cars outside of suspects offices. The investigators didn't know about our traffic accident database because traffic accidents are handled and written up by patrol officers. I linked the surveillance database against the traffic accident database and provided additional evidence for them to use when building cases. (I would have gotten a commendation out of it if the head investigator hadn't gotten in trouble over something unrelated)
LEARN! You never know when something will click and you can produce something amazingly cool.
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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]
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