Re: The IDS, the EDS and the DBMS
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 11:57:23 -0400
Message-ID: <qM2dnceQW94UCaXcRVn-ig_at_comcast.com>
"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:uT%Zc.283318$eM2.118861_at_attbi_s51...
> My observation is that it's the career path that comes first. But that's
not
> definitive; I'm an application programmer but I'm now fully signed up
> to having the DBMS manage the data. (Which is sort of the whole point.)
I think you are right that it's not definitive. I was a programmer type for about 20 years before I began to look at things from a data centric point of view. I say "data centric" rather than DBMS, because the first tools I used in this new career were DEC datatrieve and RMS indexed files. Relational (SQL) databases came later.
But my new boss was a regional manager, and he wanted his districts to perform better. He needed information that would help him do that. He didn't care whether my techniques were "advanced state of the art" or "skunk works". He just wanted the information he needed. At the same time, I was moved off of a machine where I understood the operating system down to the bit level to a newer machine (a VAX) where I was a poor dumb jerk who didn't even know how to login. That facilitated the transition from propellor head to information consultant.
As far as "DBA"s go, in my later career as a database consultant, I ran into DBAs that ran the gamut from "ask me anything about the database, but don't ask me anything about the data" to people who had both tactical and strategic understanding of the data as a critical success factor for the whole enterprise. These were the go to guys for any question at all, whether it was speeding up an SQL query or reconciling cell phone roaming charges between Europe and the US.
Starting in the late 1990s, I started to see the DBA role downgraded, sort of like the role of system manager was downgraded earlier. There are probably a lot of people who have only been in the business for about ten years who have no cultural memory of the system manager as an important person. Received on Fri Sep 03 2004 - 17:57:23 CEST