Re: No future for DB2 - slightly off-topic, discusses what people are being taught at uni

rkusenet wrote:

> I am beginning to wonder whether being a full time DBA is a
> dying profession left for old fogies like me.

I think from one standpoint it is. That standpoint being the traditional DBA job: It is on its last legs. The DBAs and SysAdmins of the last decade or two are the equivalent of the county sheriff during the days of the Wild West. A bunch of self-selected cowboys with a skill set viewed as valuable but untrained, uncertified, and being driven into obsolecense by changes in the law and changes in the demands placed upon them by the community at large.

Just as a point-in-time came when it was not enough to be tough and be good with a gun ... we are rapidly approaching the time when it will no longer be enough to be as we have been.

Just as a group of physicians formed the American Board of Medical Specialities (www.abms.org) and just as attorney's formed the American Bar Association: With equivalent organizations for other professions such as accountant, engineer, and pharmacist we too will need to define and certify members of our profession. All joking aside ... how many people do you know in IT today that can't, given a single first-normal form table, convert it to 2NF, 3NF, etc.

More on this later and hopefully something about the American College of Database Professionals: An organization in its formative stages and modeled after other professional organizations such as www.facs.org.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)