DBA career

doublehelix2 · 4 May 2008 at 14:06

I'm wondering what it takes to become a DBA and what sort of training you could do to become one. Would it be best to take a CS degree or IT degree or can you just do some sort of cert training and get experience too?

What sort of day to day work would you be doing?

What sort of salary ceiling would you not raise above?

GarethDW · 4 May 2008 at 17:15

Where I work, experience and certification counts for more than just a degree (although a degree is an additional nice to have). Blaggers should get caught out by the interview technique whereby someone very experienced grills them about their knowledge.

Can't really say what they do on a day-to-day basis, but part of their role where I work is to support and maintain the existing databases (in production, testing & development environments) and also planning, design, development and implementation of new database applications. I'm sure a DBA can answer this in more detail than I can.

I guess salary ceilings would depend on the organisation you're working for... I'm in the financial sector where salaries are fairly high compared to, say, manufacturing. I've known DBAs to easily pull in £50k - £60k, and that's outside London. I'm sure that there are plenty that don't earn anywhere near that amount though.

Have a look here for a very rough idea... http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk

doublehelix2 · 5 May 2008 at 12:04

GarethDW said:
Where I work, experience and certification counts for more than just a degree (although a degree is an additional nice to have). Blaggers should get caught out by the interview technique whereby someone very experienced grills them about their knowledge.

Can't really say what they do on a day-to-day basis, but part of their role where I work is to support and maintain the existing databases (in production, testing & development environments) and also planning, design, development and implementation of new database applications. I'm sure a DBA can answer this in more detail than I can.

I guess salary ceilings would depend on the organisation you're working for... I'm in the financial sector where salaries are fairly high compared to, say, manufacturing. I've known DBAs to easily pull in £50k - £60k, and that's outside London. I'm sure that there are plenty that don't earn anywhere near that amount though.

Have a look here for a very rough idea... http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk

That's great, thanks for replying. I'm getting the feeling though that there aren't many DBA's here at OC. Is it a boring thing to do? Surely there must be one or two DBAs here?

MikeTimbers · 6 May 2008 at 22:18

I work very closely with the DBAs and they earn good money. Quite a repititios job mind, with not a lot new. Sure, there's keeping up with the new releases of Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server but mostly it's ensuring the backups have worked and that none of the database files are about to fill up. If you're at a big company, you might get (un)lucky and get involved with Oracle Financials or e-Business or HRMS and if you're really (un)lucky you might get to work on Oracle RAC.

The money can be good but you're on a treadmill of keeping your skills up-to-date and not getting stuck with an obsolete technology.

Volcs · 6 May 2008 at 22:49

I've worked with DBAs on 6 figures. Oracle RAC.

Rilot · 6 May 2008 at 23:00

DBAs are some of the dullest people I know. I work with lots on a regular basis and all of them, without exception are dull dull dull.

yantorsen · 6 May 2008 at 23:53

caff · 7 May 2008 at 00:25

Don't be a DBA - be a developer who works with databases. You'll get the same skills, but you'll work with more interesting people.

doublehelix2 · 7 May 2008 at 11:31

This is probably a stupid question, but how much does it overlap with programming? I know that databases have query language, (read on wiki) but would you have to have knowledge of java or C++?

Toker · 7 May 2008 at 11:42

the dba's where i work are all good fun and slightly mental, so I wouldn't tar them all with the same brush

Haircut · 7 May 2008 at 11:49

doublehelix2 said:
This is probably a stupid question, but how much does it overlap with programming? I know that databases have query language, (read on wiki) but would you have to have knowledge of java or C++?

Probably not C++, maybe Java if you're using Oracle and definitely a good knowledge of Unix.
Most DBAs won't even use SQL all that much as their day to day work. Obviously they should know it pretty well but most common tasks they perform will involve more Unix scripting than SQL scripting.