July Question: Tell us your story of how you happened to become a DBA.
Question of the Month | July 1, 2010 | 1:01 amPost your responses to the above SQL Aloha Question of the Month in the comments section below (at www.bradmcgehee.com if you are viewing this from a syndicated newsfeed). And don’t forget to enter your e-mail address when you post your response, so I can contact you if you win.
This month, because of the nature of the question, which has no right or wrong answer, the winner will be selected randomly from all the entries that are received. I have talked to many DBAs over the years, and nobody I have talked to started out their career wanting to be a DBA. They all seemed to have started one career, and then eventually moved into the role as a DBA (part-time or full-time). If you are not a DBA, but would like to be a DBA, you can still enter. Instead of telling us your story of how you became a DBA, tell us why you want to become a DBA.
For more information, click on the Question of the Month tab above.
| This Month’s Prizes
|
The prizes this month are an Amazon.com voucher worth US$50.00 and a license for Red Gate’s monitoring and alerting tool, SQL Response, with one year of support and upgrades worth US$619.00. Not familiar with SQL Response?
Here’s what one customer has to say:”SQL Response enables you to monitor, get alerted and respond to SQL problems before they start, in an easy-to-navigate, user-friendly and visually precise way, with drill-down detail where you need it most.” John B Manderson |
- Winner of the July Question of the Month
- July Question: What Do You Think are the Most Common DBA Pain Points?
- March Question: What is the biggest mistake/problem you have ever found on a SQL Server instance, and how did you fix it?
- August Question: What types of continuing education do you use to keep up with being a DBA?
- December Question: What does it mean to be a Proactive DBA?
RSS
Twitter
Linked In
After 7 years of enterprise systems and server administration experience (Windows, MS Exchange Server etc), I have decided to switch to DBA as I am always interested in MS SQL Server. During my career as systems/server administrator, I was involved in installation and configuration of SQL Server 2000/2005. I had got a chance to help the DBA team during a SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 migration project and then I got MCDBA SQL 2000 certified. It was a wrong time to get certified on SQL 2000 as SQL 2005 was already in full swing.
Then I approached the DBA team manager (DB team has just 2 people, then they were in need of more people) and slowly initiated the talks for switch to DBA role. Its been 3 years since I moved to DBA, total experience of 10 years. It was a late move after 7 years of Systems admin experience but I still have lot of time left to explore the DB world. Within 3 years, I have got myself into production DBA role for SQL 2005/2008, Sybase ASE 15.0. We sometimes do a bit of query tuning as well. Also worked on couple of migration/upgrade projects SQL 2000 to SQL 2005, SQL 2005 to SQL 2008, Sybase ASE 12.5 to ASE 15.0.
So it was a personal choice to get into databases followed by opportunity coming from the organizational needs that prompted my move to DBA in August 2007. Still long way to go….
In the 1980s I was a developer who specialized in Point-of-Sale (POS) retail systems. I was the “expert” at interpreting the data in the registers and converting it to ISAM form for processing. In the early 1990s another company hired me to design their relational database for their POS audit software. That transition to the relational database made me realize that I wanted to be a DBA way more than a network admin or developer.
Oddly enough, I did decide early on that I wanted to be a DBA. While in college, I found the Oracle classes much more enjoyable than the Java and C++ classes I was taking. Speaking with the professor further encouraged me. But I had more experience with web design and started my IT career there. I first got to work with Access, and then SQL Server, in the web developer role. I was then lured away from that rather comfy position to be a one-person IT show for a small company. I got to ‘do it all’ there, but most importantly, I gained much more experience with SQL Server and its related components. I discovered just how powerful data could be as I was able to leverage SQL Server to improve business processes, reduce human errors, reduce headcount, and grow the business. I soon found that the DBA part of the job was what I enjoyed the most. A few years ago, I left that job to become a DBA full-time. And that, in a nutshell, is the story of how I became a DBA.
This past Tuesday night I had the honor of speaking to a small group of college students who are all members of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP). This was my third opportunity speaking to a group of college students and my second time speaking to an AITP group. The structure and order of the meetings are very similar. I start with a short introduction and continue by discussing some trends in Information Technology and my current career. This meeting began in a very similar fashion; however this time I was asked a question that I had never been asked. One student asked me, “How did you become a DBA?” It’s strange that the question had never been posed before. Nevertheless, I was up to the challenge.
In the mid 1990’s I began my career in corporate America as a mortgage underwriter. This was a very monotonous job. A few variations to the type of income documentation, credit level or appraisal, but overall the same set of information. One primary part of the job was traveling to various branch offices within the United States. During the travels an underwriter was expected to teach the Loan Originators employed at the branch how to build a loan package that contained only the information that was needed for the approval of the loan.
When the underwriter returned to his or her home office, the person was required to send emails to the each branch, listing each loan underwritten in the branch and a list of pended items for each loan. Typically an underwriter could spend a day or two composing the emails for each branch. At the time I was not a very good typist. So for me, this was a very daunting task. During my undergraduate studies I had taken an Introductory Information Technology course. One of the requirements was to develop an Access Database. I remembered how Access stored information that was later used for reporting and making decisions. At that moment I decided that I was going to design an Access database that would store this information and I would later use that information to somehow compose these emails.
The idea was great but there was one problem, I did not own a portable computer, or as we know them today as a LAPTOP. Fortunately my mother-in-law was always purchasing things she did not need, and fortunately during our last visit she had given me a TOSHIBA Satellite PRO (T2400CT).
Coupling my little laptop with an Access Bible, I developed a nice Access Database, forms and reports included, that I used to collect data when I was traveling. I assigned the Macro to a button, and when the button was clicked an Email message was opened with a Word document attached that only contained data for a specified branch. The only thing left was to add a recipient and click the Send button. This reduced the time I spent composing these emails from 2 or 3 days to a couple of hours. In the end the CEO found out about my little database and decided that it should be used by all Underwriters. I explained to him that my book stated that Access should not be used by no more than 5 or 10 people concurrently. He suggested that we upsize it to SQL Server 7.0 for the backend and keep the front end in Access, which led to the beginning of my obsession with databases. From that project I started developing larger databases and moved on to become a DBA for a small Mortgage Company in Baton Rouge, and the rest is HISTORY!!
I started off absolutely certain I wanted to be a chemist. As I went through school and my first research position afterwards, I realized that I had far more interest in handling and analyzing the data than actually doing the chemistry itself, but I was still convinced that chemist was my career path.
At my next (current) position, I continued along a similar path until I had an epiphany. What really made me a great chemist was that I had a knack for understanding how things related to other things. While this helped greatly with being a chemist, it was even more applicable to relational databases. As such, I started getting my fingers in everything I could with our company databases.
The result of this is that I discovered that I was not nearly as interested in designing applications as I was in performance tuning and maintaining the integrity of our data. At that point I realized that even if my title doesn’t say so, I am a DBA.
After college the last thing I wanted to do (and I told all my family and friends) was to work on databases because of all the horror stories I have heard. Add to it that every DBA I knew would fall into the “real interesting” category so that career path was not even in my sites. I was going down the hardware and networking avenue.
I was working as a field engineer servicing remote sites when the company I was working for merged with another company. My service area shrunk to 1/3 of what it was which was not bad because I stayed closer to home. Then about 4 months after the merger I got wind of “restructuring” and field technicians were the first to be “reorganized” — a.k.a. fired. I had a friend that was a DBA and was looking for a Jr DBA to help him out with day to day tasks. He told me he would teach me everything and tell me how to answer the questions in the interview since he was the one interviewing for the position. I figured I would rather go there and not get fired.
I have been working in all aspects of databases since then (2001) and have not looked back. I have have gone through the ranks (up to management) and enjoy being a DBA.
We needed one and the rest of the developers thought it was all voodoo. It all looked pretty straightforward to me. That was Sybase 4.9.2, 10, & 11.5 and then into SQL Server.
I started my career as a desktop technician, moved to server administrator, and then to a senior Domain and Active Directory architect. During that transition we had a Microsoft patching fire drill and patching some SQL 2000 boxes were a part of that server list. After installing the patch, we had to verify the version and someone on the team showed me the query to get that and how to execute it. This intrigued me to find out more about this product whose version could not be derived from a Help-About menu. I started learning SQL 2000, was hooked, and got my MCDBA.
It didn’t take long to see the writing on the wall from Microsoft that so many of their products had SQL on the backend like Sharepoint and MOM(I’m a MOM fan a well), and that was the route it was going. At the time, they even rumored moving AD to SQL from the Jet Engine. For me it was a case of being proactive and “see a need, fill a need”. I found my niche and new speciality and love being a SQL DBA.
Since then I discovered the SQL Community which took my new passion and breathed a whole other life into it. I am now an active member of my local user group (NTSSUG), blog, twitter, and was heavily involved in organizing SQLSAT #35.
I graduate from college in computer science in the old day, like most of the other gray haired guys. For those of you that are wondering, that was in the days of the dinosaurs, or should I call them mainframes. Yes, my first job out of college was as a programmer doing COBOL programming against some database name DMS1100 that ran on a UNISYS machine. Was I a DBA? No, I was just an application programmer.
I quickly became board of reading data in and writing data out. Where was the science part of this job? For Christ sake, I went to school study computer science, took a lot of math and electrical engineering class and here I was writing code to read a record and then write the information to a green bar paper invoice. Real exciting stuff!!! Just was not what I had in mind from my college degree.
I went to my manager and told him how I felt and he told me he would ask around and see if he could find me a different job that I might like. Well 6 week later, I had two job offers. One was to go and work as a systems programmer working on the UNISYS operating system team, or to go work as an assistant DBA on an IBM machine. Can you guess which job I picked?
Yep, I jump at the chance to move to the IBM mainframe job and learn all about coding direct calls using PL/I against a database name ADABAS. Exciting times way before the internet and SQL Server. Eventually I became the DBA. In those days, I managed what was known as a very large database. I hate too even mention the size, because today it is almost laugh-ably small. However, in those days it was big and took a holiday weekend just to reorganize. We had a tape error at least once a week and a bad disked about every three months. Disaster recovery was almost part of our daily work, well not quite. However, there were many 24 to 36 hour shifts to recover that one big database. Yes the days of the dinosaurs where exciting times, with their reel tapes, dismountable disk packs, single computer system that took up 2000 square feet, and that was a considered a state-of-the-art computer system.
Now fast-forward about 14 years, and a few different DBMS’s in between and I started my SQL Server career working with 6.5 on a computers no bigger than a breadbasket. This was right about the time my present employer was migrating to SQL Server 7.0. Got this job because I know ADABAS, and yes, I still manage a legacy system running on this old DBMS, but it has be up-scaled to UNIX (whoopee).
I guess if I were to sum all this up, I would say, “I just was in the right place at the right time, and the hand that was dealt was to be a DBA”. Looking back, I occasionally asked myself should I draw a card, or hold the hand that was dealt. The funny thing about being a DBA it is almost like getting a new hand dealt to you every day, there is always something different and exciting to work on or learn with every new day.
I worked in an audio and video duplication facility loading tape into VHS cassettes. We had ten video loaders and the sales reps would always ask how long it would take to load X number of jobs on various numbers of loaders. Many times I would be asked while the sales rep had the client on the phone. So when they needed info, they needed it now. Since each program varied in length it was always different. What I needed was a time study and a place to hold all my data. The only thing they had that I thought I could use was FileMaker Pro 4.0. So; I built a little database, did a time study, and plugged in all my data. I then built a program that would allow me to enter the number of units ordered, the length of the program and the number of loaders I wanted to use and it would kick out a time frame, with a marginal buffer for breaks, lunch and loader maintenance included. If that time was not going to fit within the time needed I would just keep adding loaders until I could estimate the completion time accurately. I discovered how valuable this was and began scheduling multiple jobs at once and completing them all on time. Anyway, after people caught wind of this I was soon building databases for various departments all over the company. By the time I left 75% of my job was database development and maintenance. I decided I liked doing this kind of work, went to college and here I am. And I love doing what I do. Thank you former job for allowing me to develop my skills and find my future career!
My entry into the IT field was at the University of Louisville where I studied Computer Information Systems and worked for the IT department and developed applications for the college of business. I had a very good database instructor named Dr. Jeff Guan who really knew his stuff and the topic of database always held some kind of mysterious draw for me. After school, I started my own consulting/developing business and worked full-time for a while at a local internet company as a developer and systems admin. The work I did focused mostly on the database side of things, whether it be design or administration or maintenance- everybody wanted “faster responses” and I always looked at the database(s) first. I was taught and believe that applications are only as good as the underlying database design and configuration.
While working, I went on to study part-time at the University of Cincinnati, earning a masters in Information Systems and again, I had a great database instructor. It was the hardest class I ever took in my life but it was also the one that stuck with me the most. While I continued to work as a generalist wearing many hats (business analyst, architect, developer, project manager, DBA), I realized after a while that my strong suit was in the database area where I spent a great deal of time designing, developing and administering databases using several versions of SQL Server as well as versions of MySQL and Postgres.
What really made me decide to focus on becoming a DBA was when I met Lezza, my girlfriend. She has been a SQL Server DBA for 20 years and knows more about databases, how they work and real-world application than anyone I’ve ever met and she is currently a senior DBA for one of the largest health insurance companies in the world. She offered to teach me everything she knows about being a DBA allowing me learn from a true expert (in theory and practice) and focus my skills on an area that I was already fairly competent in and want to learn more about.
Now, we work together as a freelance DBA team helping businesses locally and remotely with their SQL Server database needs. I handle the more basic issues while she takes care of the high-level DBA work. This way we operate as a very efficient team and can help each other be more productive and learn along the way.
This guy walked into our offices one day and asked me, “Know anything about databases?”. Three years later, and i’m still the Senior DBA.
I know that sounds silly, and you’re expecting some kind of heroics about how I stood out from the crowd, yadda yadda. But that was it. I said yes, and here I am. I didn’t know who he was.. I kind-of knew /of/ him, because I’d seem him about the building, but I think I’d spoken to him about twice, and never about work. It did so happen that I was working for a company doing databases, but not your traditional SQL Databases, more like the kinds of Databases that Google or Yahoo might use to fuzzily look up mass binary or text data. I had been involved in a few projects to merge those with ‘traditional’ databases, so was pretty familiar with MySQL and SQL Server. So when this guy offered me a job for a lot more money, what was I to do?
Since making that choice I’ve learned more about set-based programming, data analysis, reporting and cacheing than I thought I ever wanted to. I thought that once I’d done the PhD, that was pretty much it. The world of computing was at your feet, and you’d got the hardest part behind you. SQL comes at you tangentially. Seeminly elegant in some ways, and ugly as sin in others, it’s a love-hate relationship. One thing it’s taught me is that university teaches you almost nothing about the real world data storage problems. As I’ve been in the job longer and longer, I’ve come to see how people consistently get SQL wrong, and how they rush to get things finished faster making seriously flawed mistakes en route. It’s taught me more about how to spot the blemishes in a development project than working as a developer would.
All in all, I think I enjoy being a DBA better than a computational mathematics developer. Whilst it can be frustrating at times when you see some of the bad SQL which you have to look after, it can be a fun exercise finding better and more permanent ways to deal with a relational database.
I was a Systems Administrator when I took courses for the MCSE certification. One of the optional courses was SQL Server Administration. I used knowledge from this course at my job right away (administered several small databases for the web application). One of the databases (SQL Server 7) required something that we know now as log shipping. This was interesting! I was involved as well to the database development.
In two years I decided to pass another exam to get MCDBA certification. Almost at the same time I applied to the DBA position in a bank. As part of the interview I had to complete test task – create stored procedure for one of the bank’s applications. This was probably my longest stored procedure up to date (9 pages of code). This was my first job as a full time DBA. I was lucky to have a great team leader (thanks Oleg!) who taught me a lot!
I have been working as DBA now for almost 9 years and I really enjoy it! There are always challenges and still a lot to learn. I use to be Systems Administrator, Developer, but DBA is the best job on the planet for me!
I started off in college as an Optical Engineer, but pretty much found by my Senior year that I wanted to be in computers more than Optics – way too late to switch majors or even get a minor at that point. I got an opportunity to learn a little Netware and some very basic Access which helped me get my first job. There I got my MCSE and started leaning towards either being a Sys Admin or doing DB Admin/Development work. I got a great opportunity to move into a DBA position and took it. From there, I learned quite a bit about SQL Server, DTS, Replication, and other miscellaneous IT functions.
I’ve been doing DB Development work for more than 10 years and like that quite a bit more than the Admin side, but I realize that I’m probably in the minority there. I also appreciate dabbling in scripting languages to make my jobs easier. Right now, I really enjoy the way the community as a whole is expanding and coming together. More people seem to be getting involved and sharing information, humor, and even getting assistance has gotten much easier (without needing to get funds to attend the big conferences, too).
I worked as a developer on Visual Basic and Powerbuilder with a top notch financial company in the 90s. We were a team of 4 developers and our boss was the manager cum DBA. I took pro active interest in helping him now and then as I seemed more inclined towards administration than development. We worked on SQL Server 6.5 back then. I helped him set up transaction log backups, and we used commands like pin and unpin table and even a DBCC command to delete a row without logging it (i do not remember why). He was a kind and generous person to work for. But one day it so happened that he had a disagreement with his wife, a drink too many to drown it, came in to work and dropped a critical database on production. We did have backups of course and we were able to restore with 10 mins of data loss in half an hour. But the management considered him unreliable, transferred him promptly to another position and when he left he recommended me for the DBA tasks. That was how I landed my first DBA job. They did not send me to any training or conference, I learnt on my own and went to the first PASS conference by taking a bank loan. PASS inspired me to start a user group and since then I have never looked back. I am a senior DBA now and have attended 9 conferences so far, most of them paid for by employer. I love the community and seen many people aside of me make progress by practicing the simple virtues of persistence, hard work and determination.
Although I spent 1 month in the IT department of a company in Germany, where I worked in 1970 for 12 months as part of my degree course, I was not able to make a career switch to IT until 1976, when I retrained as programmer and got a job as trainee programmer. I progressed rapidly to Systems Analyst, Project Leader/ manager, but for most projects, I designed, set up and tuned the “database”, which then consisted of ISAM, Relative and Sequential files and converted customer data files from other platforms. In those days, there were no tools, so you developed your own ie wrote a program, many of which were one-offs. In the early 1980s I worked for DEC, first in Europe, then in the US and the fashion was to convert internal systems from 16bit to 32 bit operating systems. As well as managing the software development on the new platform, I did the data migrations. In 1985 DEC released their Relational Database product, Rdb for VMS. I quickly became a specialist and have been a consultant DBA on RdbVMS ever since. Rdb was sold to Oracle in 1995 and is now known as “Oracle Rdb Server”. I started on Sqlserver with 2000, migrated to 2005 and 2008 and mainly work with it, although I occasionally still work on Rdb. The last time was Dec 2009.
Since 1985, I’ve worked almost round the world in Europe, Asia, Australasia, North America as a DBA. It’s been a case of “Have skills, can travel”. I’ve used my language skills (fluent German, French) to establish myself and work in countries like Germany, Switzerland, France as a native. I’ve also worked in Netherlands, Sweden, where I have been able to learn the local language to some degree. In 1989, I was first described as a DBA, rather than a relational database specialist, so I adopted the title.
Even after all this time and a wide variety of companies in various industries, it’s still a thrill to identify problems and fix them, particularly those to do with performance. Tuning is still the Blue Riband of DBA work.
I was working in enterprise product support for a large server manufacturer. As part of my position I had to get and MCSE and since there was alot of overlap I also got my MCDBA at the same time. I knew if I wanted to grow out of product support I needed some sort of specialization and being a DBA just attracted me for some reason. After about 2 years of doing nothing beyond monkeying with my systems at home an entry level position opened up at my company for a DBA. I interviewed and worked my way up though the DBA hierarchy.
Ironically when I was in school and was taking a database design course I commented to a fellow student that I would never be a DBA as this was boring. Funny thing is it was boring then but isn’t now. Interesting where life leads you.
I was in my manager’s office fixing his PC, I was working as a desktop support back then, and it happen that our financial applications manager was in his office at the same time, then he asked me if I know anything about SQL as they will let go a hired contractor DBA.
Since then and I started to read and watch educational videos about SQL, Now i’m using SSIS, SSRS and SSAS as the business needed.
I got into computers in 1997, self studies in Excel-became a bit boring, and went into a internship where I studied Access. Worked on some projects where I did design of tables , queries, reports and macros. I fell in love with Data. Later I borrowed some money to towards MCSD studies, as that was highly sought after qualification in 1999. Landed my first full time IT job and did software support, implementation, training, report writing testing in a small company. At the core of me was my passion for databases. The system we supported was running SQL 6.5, 7 and 2000. Got to do a lot “DBA” work in the 7 years I was at the company. But it wasn’t enough….
I joined a bank as a DBA 4 years ago, and worked on a couple of big projects. I was a Team leader on Production support for a while. Now I am doing SQL Development (mostly TSQL and SSIS packages), and help out on DBA issues in DEV. But if I catch myself, I am trying to administrate and optimize and thinking about indexes, seeing discrepancies in Server versions. At the core, I am still a DBA.
About 6 years ago,after my friend’s intern experience we had a conversation about being a DBA in a bank,
when i was still a student in computer engineering.
He told things,such as you should be available 7/24 and be ready to interfere to the system,
you are not a Manager,not so popular but most of the things are based to the moves you do,
as a summary you are the man behind the scene.After that I decided to be a DBA,
but I just be able to select,insert,delete or update simply,
I expected more than that,a DBA should do more mission critical things and after my graduation I started to work as a software engineer in a company,
Joining in a real project,helped me to open my eyes and discover the enjoyable and strong sides of Databases,
The more it was getting harder to understand,the more I tried and had fun.
After 10 months,I started to a new job and realized that they really need a DBA
and they realized that a bit complex multi row update can be done without using cursor.
I took all the database load and still trying to improve my skills for more than 2 years,
I know I am still not a real DBA but want to be a good one day after day.
During my 8 years of doing phone technical support, I assisted with questions revolving around Access and other database systems. Just little questions here and there that would make me scramble for a resource and an answer to get back to the requester.
In the process the questions and systems got more and more complex. How do I get this data from this access database? How do I point access at Sql Server? How can I write this query? What do you mean by backup? I got Sql Server 2005, how do we upgrade? What’s reporting services?, etc…
About that time a good portion of my time was spent either answering questions or taking care of databases (backups, configuration, queries, optimization,etc…) So they made it part of my Job.
The process kept repeating (with other database platforms and systems) on and now it is my primary duty.
Nuff said.
I got a job for a telemarkting company programming in clipper/xbase out of high school and put myself through college working for them. They were small at the time and couldn’t afford college grads. They hired me because I knew Pascal (which I had taught myself during high school) and the owners wife and my sister were friends. I learned the basics of programming and database design there. I moved into Delphi on xbase and then Foxpro for the same company and then left for a job as the “do it all” IT guy for a medium sized Sheriff’s Office. They were a Visual Basic / SQL Server environment but I wanted to work in the Criminal Justice field (my major) so I applied. I read SQL for dummies the night before my interview and realized everything I wanted to do in xbase but couldn’t was possible in relational databases (this being my first exposure) it was like a whole new world opened up.
I got the job and immediatley fell in love with “relational” databases working with both Sybase and SQL Server. I worked with an incredibly supportive boss who allowed us to innovate and become early adopters of .NET V 2002. We did some cool stuff and took the Office from 1980′s computing to state of the art in a matter of a few years. I decided along the way that my favorite environment to work in was SQL Server.
Wanting to focus soley on SQL Server administration/development I took a job as a SQL 2008 DBA a couple years ago. I also do some SQL consulting on the side.
I was working for a finance company doing mainly data entry/interpretation using an evil Access front end system with a MS SQL backend. The system was rubbish, crashed constantly and was quite buggy. Gradually my role grew to include supporting this system and eventually into the company DBA. If you want something fixed chances are you will have to do it yourself.
As a PS the Access system was eventually refactored into Java.
My first job out of university was working on the helpdesk for a company providing computer parts and repairs. The company wasn’t big enough to have 1st,2nd 3rd levels of support it was just us which was great as it allowed me to learn and be involved in lots of different areas. As the company had no DBA (Who needs one right we’ve got developers!) helpdesk duties also required some interaction with SQL Server in terms of report development using TSQL, it is at this point my interest was sparked and i became hooked. DBA was my chosen career path and now that i had my goal i set about learning as much as i could. I’ve always found that real world knowledge can only be learned from experience not books, they mainly contain ideal world theory but cannot account for the interesting little twists each company likes to put on things, so in order to improve myself i needed to be working with people more knowledgable about SQL Server than i was. This meant a few job changes over the years as every environment is different and uses different elements of SQL Server Functionality, i left each position going for that new one thinking i knew it all now, only to be presented with a whole new way of looking at things
. As the years have passed i have now found myself at the position of Senior DBA with people now asking me questions about how things work, looking at me as the knowledge resource, which is rewarding and equally i still find myself asking questions either in the forums or to the guys work with if they have more experience in a particular area. When people say i’m a DBA or he knows about SQL Server it instantly flashes through my mind how vast the topic is and how much i still have to learn hence i never describe myself as an expert.
In 1994 I begun in SQL Language using QBE as microsoft access beta tester in European commissions Thermie Project. In 1996 I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation as SQL QBE for UNIX. Meanwhile I started in the Internet creating http://magodeoz.com with BBDs in ASP/MS-Access and PHP/MySQL. In may 2005 I completed a project for Vodaphone in .NET with SQL Server Express and 2000. In 2007 I started to manage metrics and performance for SQL Server 2005 getting into the secrets of data tuning. In 2008 I managed about 15 websites with databases. In 2009 I started using metadata, fulltext search and advanced capabilities of SQL Server 2008, creating Thesaurus in XML for Spanish language.
In IT I was working as System Architect from 2002 still now. Was in 2010 when at least I am working as DBA Senior for my backwards and skills in Data Bases, Clustered Servers and high availability systems. Now I am 45.
In 1996, the company I worked for decided that we were going to port our Clipper Application to Windows. The decision was to move to Delphi for programming and SQL Server 4.21b on the brand new Windows Server platform.
I was part of the two man team whose role was to convert all of the Clipper code to Delphi – after several months work in converting everything over, we realized that we needed someone full time to manage the database for all of the users we were going to have on the system.
When they asked who would be interested, I was the only one who answered. So by default I was given the responsibility.
Talk about trial by fire. Not only did I need to learn about SQL Server, but I also had to learn Windows Server administration. By the time we were ready to go live, we were on Windows 3.51 with SQL Server 6.0. I had a fantastic mentor who was the DBA for the VAX System the company used. His best instruction to me was to learn the commands and to skip the fancy GUI tools. His point, and one that has stuck with me to this day, is that you might not always have the GUI to work with. If you understand what’s happening behind the scenes, and something goes wrong, you have more to work with in trying to figure out what went wrong. And even better on how to fix it.
The best part was that I got three trips to London out of the position. We were in partnership with a firm overseas and had to make several trips to work with their team to setup replication between us and their three locations.
I’ve worked with every version of SQL Since then on every Windows platform out there. The skills I gained in having to do everything have come in very handy and have given me positions where I was the go-to guy when things were not going as planned. It also went a long way in being able to help justify why we needed a new server or why we needed to configure something this way or that.
My suggestion to fledgling DBAs would be to learn not just SQL Server, but to also have an understanding of Windows Server Configuration as well as networking config/setup. I’m not saying become a master of all of these, but if you know enough that when you are talking to your network administrator about something, they will most likely give you more of an ear if you can understand where they are coming from. Being able to “talk shop” so to speak with them will often smooth out the paths and put them on your side (which is where you want them to be – just as you want to be on their side).
Finally – read, read, read. There are tons of books available to learn the in and outs of SQL Server. Take advantage of them. Get SQL Server installed on your own PC and play. Spend time on forums such as SQL Server Central and interact with others out there. Read problems people are having, try to help solve them. Nothing helps you to learn faster than trying to help others.
And don’t be afraid to ask. Be mindful that you might not get an answer you expect or one that will help. Sometimes it’s how you phrased the question that makes sense to you, but means something different to everyone who reads it. So if you don’t get a helpful answer, rephrase your question, thank the answerer and try again. POLITELY! The last thing you want to be known as is the SOB who get’s avoided.
I have been at this IT thing for a long, long time. I started out as a student in the early 70′s as I worked in a administrative job for the State of Tennessee. Gradually, I worked into a job where I was using some of the earliest mini-computers being deployed by business and my interest grew. I took more courses in IT and eventually became an instructor teaching people how to be come programmers. I taught Introduction to Data Processing (you know, bits, bytes, base 2 math, double-dabble, flow-charts), Cobol, Fortran and my favorite, BASIC, all on a Kayro CPM based personal computer (they were brand new on he market and white hot commodities). Later, after the technical school I worked for was sold to the competition, I went to work as a programmer (for real this time) and started writing software for the marketplace. This software used an old BASIC routine that maintained a BTREE index on a flat file. I was hooked! I wanted to know more…. So I played with BTrieve, Foxbase, dBase, Clarion, Paradox (which had it’s own 4-GL language which was really cool) and finally Progress DB and Progress 4GL. The latter, Progress, is where I landed for nearly 30 years writing sotware, administering databases and project managing implementatioins of QAD’s MFG/PRO ERP systems (over 50 implementations). Then I left the consulting business and took a job as a manager implementing MFG/PRO for a Columbus, Ohio medical company. When I earned enough stock options and the company sold, I cashed out and went to work as a UNIX Administrator. But my attachment to databases never really waned until I found myself being offered the DBA position, vacating the UNIX Administrator job. I accepted and took over the Progress, Oracle and SQL Server databases for the whole company and that is where I’ve been ever since. I enjoy the challenges and the constant learning that goes with the technology. I especially enjoy teaching and mentoring my fellow DBA who has been working with me for the last 2 years. He has really come into his own as a fabulously talented BDA and I am really proud of him. Now he teaches me! That is my story. I hope others can learn from me; never stop and keep your curious nature about you. It will serve you well.
Jerry Sommerville
After working on the shop floor welding ofr about 15 years, they asked me if I wanted to take a temporary postition (3-6 months) helping setup the new ERP system. A little over a year later, when we were going live, they gave me 2 days of report writing training. We went live with no reports – management thought that with a new system, it would take them awhile anyways to figure out what they really needed. After 5 or 6 years of writing reports for Operations, I moved over to the Data Warehousing dept, where I’ve been for about 10 years. So the ‘temporary’ position ended up being a complete career change.
Greg E
After retiring from 20 years in the Navy working on electronics I was hired by my company to teach computer skills, Microsoft Office, Windows, etc. Three years later a help desk position opened and my contract to teach computers ended so I made the switch to IT. A day later the company fired the network admin so I started to learn quickly. One of the main responsibilities is Microsoft Dynamics which runs on SQL. I started with SQL 2000 and now have upgraded all 3 of our SQL servers to SQL 2008.
I’m still working as network admin/DBA as well as part help desk, etc.
During this time I joined PASS and am a board member of CBusPASS Columbus, Ohio. We hosted our first SQL Saturday last month and are already looking forward to next’s years.
I had been working as an HRIS Admin for about 6 months. I was responsible for report writing and maintaining an antiquated Oracle database. I knew enough to be dangerous. In the Spring of 2007, we began the hunt for a new HR/Payroll system. My research showed that most everything out ther was running on SQL 2000 or 2005. I had messed around with 2000 a little and knew how to attach databases and set up ODBC connections, but had never delved into writing queries, scripts, or doing any kind of administration. Around that time, one of the developers in our group was given a certificate to take the SQL 2005 Administration test for free. She had no desire to take it so she offered it to anyone in IT. I thought ‘What the heck, it’s a free test.’ So I nabbed the certificate, picked up the first Microsoft Press Book and began my studying.
During this time, we were heavy into our HR system migration. I was learning SQL from the book and from implementation as we went. After months of putting it off, I took my test in December of 2007. I wasn’t terribly confident, but I did pass. From then on, I began working in SSMS every day trying to bolster my skills.
In June of 2008, it was those database skills that landed me a job in Texas working on the same HRIS system for a different company. I continued my growth in the product and spent time with my boss who has spent the better part of 10 years working with various SQL products. In December 2009, he assigned to me an enormous project connecting to over a dozen different instances across our organization and building a data warehouse. I told him that the only way I’d work on this is if the DBA title was appended to my existing one. And voila, my career as a full fledged DBA is born.
Currently, I’m working heavily in SSIS continuing to modify the big project and streamline actions. I plan to continue working on the SQL 2008 certification path with a concentration in SSIS and BI.
In college I took Computer Science and loved it (interestingly enough – I wanted to be a journalist too. Go figure).
I spent years as a programmer, but really gravitated towards database development. I had a great professor at U that taught databases well – in undergrad and graduate courses. Kudos to Dr. Barker. I was also blessed with opportunities to do relational (DB2) and hierarchical (IMS) database work at my first job. Plus I was surrounded by wonderful, open, helpful people with tremendous technical skill.
Over time I was again blessed with great opportunities – Sybase in its’ infancy, then SQL Server, then Oracle, then Kimball Data Warehousing. Over time, I found myself doing all of the prep work (Scripting, DB compares (Go Red-Gate!), testing etc.) for the DBAs, and it was a natural progression. So the DBA world was what I ended up gravitiating to.
Looking back I am thankful to have worked in Development and Data Warehouse projects – it has allowed me to be more useful as a DBA, and as a mentor.
The sheer amount of SQL Server work out there meant that I have been doing only that for the last 10 or so years.
Thanks Brad for giving back & being such an excellent mentor. You’re a great example to follow.
By accident, I cannot describe it otherwise. Specifically speaking of Microsoft SQL Server, I was hired 7 years ago to as a contractor to perform a data conversion from COBOL files to SQL 2000. I had formal education in which Informix was my database to learn, but not limited to this. I also developed in Oracle 6/7 in during 1993-1995. Then I was getting involved little by little in administrative tasks such backing up the data base, restore, starting the application in a remote site when we contingency plan required it, etc. At the same time I was programming in VB6 and creating and maintenance Stored Procedures. Lately the major opportunity knocked at my door. I had the opportunity to migrate the SQL 2000 to a SQL 2008 R2. I planned the hardware, memory, hard drives, the software licenses, the whole nine yards. I setup my database distributing the load on different arrays of disk, more space to work and best of all, a SQL Server and windows server versions up to date (SQL 2008 R2 OS/SQL). All of this begun with a preparation of about a year, in which with reading all articles, attending to seminars, webinars, asking to other DBA and Developers about their experiences and most importantly, with dedication and a positive attitude towards the challenges, was the key ingredient. I keep learning and learning and testing how to improve performance, and making my role as DBA a solid part of my working skills.
I’ve been working with databases since late 1980s. Okay, now we call them tables, but then they were databases. Clipper was king and I was a programmer. I worked as a programmer through generations of languages, and every large program always had a database back-end. Heck, even today any corporate programmer needs to know what a database is and how to read from and write to it. Of course, if all you have is programmers, then those cool databases servers start looking less like gardens and more like weedy jungles. Well, we needed a gardener, and since I was the closest they had, I got the job. What I didn’t know fills a whole shelf of books. I know, I’m looking at them.
I’ve been the ‘corporate’ DBA here for about two years and recently got my title officially changed. My group’s database servers get backed up, restores are an email away, and no one has to worry about why those pesky log files won’t stop growing (simple recovery or log backups, pick one, it’s that simple). There have been some drawbacks, at least from the programmers’ point of view. I won’t let them develop in production and ‘sa’ no longer stand for ‘service account’. A few other little inconveniences along those lines, but they seem to appreciate not having to worry about their apps’ databases anymore. Now if I could just get the other departments in the company to dedicate someone to take better care of their databases…
Thanks for all the great feedback this month. It’s very interesting to see the various backgrounds that DBAs come from.
The randomly selected winner of this month’s contest is Bill Wehnert.
If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to read all of the above stories, as they are very interesting.