The DBA is Dead! Long Live the !

Question

Post reply

The DBA is Dead! Long Live the !

Grant Fritchey

SSC Guru

Points: 399534
More actions
October 14, 2026 at 12:00 am

#5059160

Comments posted to this topic are about the item The DBA is Dead! Long Live the !
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply

Site Owners SSC Guru Points: 80222 More actions · Answer 1

Thanks for posting your issue and hopefully someone will answer soon.

This is an automated bump to increase visibility of your question.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004820 More actions · Answer 2

IMHO and to your good point, the initialism of DBA has been horribly misused for decades. I'm glad it's finally dying for real.

I'm not so happy to see other "terms" replaced with things like "Bronze, Silver, and Gold", which explain nothing about the process except maybe the price at each level if you're doing it in the cloud, and other terms to replace the words "Input, Process, and Output", which led to initialisms like "ETL" and the other renditions of what to do with "oranges" 😀 .

The fishing lure industry is making a wad of by convincing many fishermen that this year's name for the same lure painted slightly differently will somehow catch more fish. The new name for those fishermen is "Not the DBA". 😀

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 399534 More actions · Answer 3

But dude, that new lure, it performs some magic. HA!

Only lure that ever worked for me was the jitterbug. I had 10-15 others. Only ever caught a fish on the jitterbug. Had to replace it once (damned log).

HA!

Anyway, I kind of don't care what we call it. The work still has to get done. We need younger people to take it on. If calling it "Reliability Engineer" gets them on target, fine. Call it "Bob". I'm good. Let's just get them engaged on the job.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt

Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

jasona.work SSC Guru Points: 50365 More actions · Answer 4

I guess I fall into a rather more basic categorey when it comes to a job title.

To paraphrase the movie: "Ah, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll accept whatever job title you say."

I do think part of the change in the job title, though, is because the lines are getting rather more fuzzy between the "keepers of the data" and the "keepers of the server for the data." Some of that is, yes, the move to cloud services where there's much less involved in making sure the server for the data is running smoothly and happily and more ensuring the data itself is good, indexed correctly, etc. Some of it, though, is also companies looking to do "more with less" and if they can pay one person to both maintain the server for the data AND the data? Well, that's a no-brainer.

Well, right up until that one person burns out, walks out the door and they're left scrambling to fill their shoes AND while the new guy gets up to speed on what the previous guy was doing.