Chapter 24. What does it mean to be a DBA?
If you ask ten database administrators (DBAs) what their job roles are, you’ll get ten different answers. For example, one organization may need a DBA to manage the day-to-day administration of SQL Server instances, whereas another organization may want a DBA to write both Transact-SQL (T-SQL) and C# code. Another organization might want a DBA who specializes in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages, whereas another organization may want a DBA who specializes in database design.
The job of DBA encompasses many different roles (and often job titles), and these vary widely from one organization to the next. In short, there is no standard job description for a DBA. This is partly because the job title doesn’t have a long history (relational databases were first used in the 1970s, and Microsoft SQL Server Version 4.21 was released in 1993) and partly because the DBA role is quickly evolving as new technologies are released.
Because there is no commonly-accepted definition of a DBA, the goal of this chapter is to describe the types of tasks and roles that DBAs commonly perform, with the aim of explaining to those new to the profession what DBAs do day-in and day-out.
