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DBA's Duties and how to perform it?
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AdmanOK
MIS
- Mar 5, 2001
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Job Description from Salary.com
Database Administrator (IT -- Computers, Software)
Administers, maintains, develops and implements policies and procedures for ensuring the security and integrity of the company database. Implements data models and database designs, data access and table maintenance codes; resolves database performance issues, database capacity issues, replication, and other distributed data issues. May require a bachelor's degree in a related area and 2-4 years of experience in the field or in a related area. Familiar with standard concepts, practices, and procedures within a particular field. Relies on limited experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals. Performs a variety of tasks. Works under general supervision; typically reports to a manager. A certain degree of creativity and latitude is required.
Database Administrator (IT -- Computers, Software)
Administers, maintains, develops and implements policies and procedures for ensuring the security and integrity of the company database. Implements data models and database designs, data access and table maintenance codes; resolves database performance issues, database capacity issues, replication, and other distributed data issues. May require a bachelor's degree in a related area and 2-4 years of experience in the field or in a related area. Familiar with standard concepts, practices, and procedures within a particular field. Relies on limited experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals. Performs a variety of tasks. Works under general supervision; typically reports to a manager. A certain degree of creativity and latitude is required.
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- #3
Duties depend greatly on the organization you work for. In some organizations, you only do admin type tasks, in others programming is also a part of your day and in a small organization like the one I work for, I do admin, programming, sales prooposals, research, management of other programmers, and other duties as assigned.
Of the purely admin duties, the first and most critial is setting up and managing your backup and recovery plan. This is the thing most likely to get you fired if you mess it up, so it is usually a high priority to the dba too.
Other things you need to do are: develop and maintain a system for assigning security rights for the databases including setting up new users and removing old users (unless the network admin does this), periodically changing the sa password, monitoring performance on a day-to-day basis, fixing perceived performance problems, setting up new databases, applying patches and new releases, making recommendations for new equipment and equipment configurations, setting up and managing replication if you are using it, setting up failover clustering, making sure maintenance tasks such as refreshing indexes are done, setting up alerts to let you know if a problem exists, setting up linked servers, creating DTS packages to import/export data.
You might also get involved in creating stored procedures and user-defined functions, designing database tables and implementing relationships and indexes, implementing business rules through the use of constraints and triggers, implementing table auditing, managing the movement of new or revised objects from development to production, advising user interface programmers on effective ways to access the data or reviewing their SQL code, evaluating commercial software for the organization you work with, testing or setting up test data and test plans, reporting and/or fixing bugs.
I'm sure there's more, just can't hink of it offhand.
Of the purely admin duties, the first and most critial is setting up and managing your backup and recovery plan. This is the thing most likely to get you fired if you mess it up, so it is usually a high priority to the dba too.
Other things you need to do are: develop and maintain a system for assigning security rights for the databases including setting up new users and removing old users (unless the network admin does this), periodically changing the sa password, monitoring performance on a day-to-day basis, fixing perceived performance problems, setting up new databases, applying patches and new releases, making recommendations for new equipment and equipment configurations, setting up and managing replication if you are using it, setting up failover clustering, making sure maintenance tasks such as refreshing indexes are done, setting up alerts to let you know if a problem exists, setting up linked servers, creating DTS packages to import/export data.
You might also get involved in creating stored procedures and user-defined functions, designing database tables and implementing relationships and indexes, implementing business rules through the use of constraints and triggers, implementing table auditing, managing the movement of new or revised objects from development to production, advising user interface programmers on effective ways to access the data or reviewing their SQL code, evaluating commercial software for the organization you work with, testing or setting up test data and test plans, reporting and/or fixing bugs.
I'm sure there's more, just can't hink of it offhand.
On a personal level, I think that your ultimate aim as a DBA is 'to make everything run so smoothly that people think that you don't do any work'......and 'to keep your head whilst everyone around you is losing theirs'. Jeremy Nicholson, Director of a UK-based Java and Data Warehousing consultancy
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- #6
thanks guys,
and i really liked your sentences jnicho02.
But again is there more details that i should know because i might apply for the dba job oppening in my company and i most probable get it too so what are the thing like
creating database recovery plan; performance and tuning the database as well as the db server.
Thanks again
and i really liked your sentences jnicho02.
But again is there more details that i should know because i might apply for the dba job oppening in my company and i most probable get it too so what are the thing like
creating database recovery plan; performance and tuning the database as well as the db server.
Thanks again
For creating database recovery plan...
1. sit down with the people who use the data. Ask them (and have it put in writing)..
- how much data (in days/hours/minutes) can you afford to lose?
- how long can you afford the data to be unavailable?
- when are your 'slow' times?
Those questions will help you design your backup strategy and plan your maintenance downtime.
2. Plan and implement a good backup strategy. Test the backups to make sure you CAN do a restore. (best way to do this....do the backup, de-attach the database and move the .mdf and .ldf files to another location, do a restore. If the restore works, great. If not, move the .mdf and .ldf files back to their orignal location, reattach them and work on figuring out what went wrong.
-SQLBill
1. sit down with the people who use the data. Ask them (and have it put in writing)..
- how much data (in days/hours/minutes) can you afford to lose?
- how long can you afford the data to be unavailable?
- when are your 'slow' times?
Those questions will help you design your backup strategy and plan your maintenance downtime.
2. Plan and implement a good backup strategy. Test the backups to make sure you CAN do a restore. (best way to do this....do the backup, de-attach the database and move the .mdf and .ldf files to another location, do a restore. If the restore works, great. If not, move the .mdf and .ldf files back to their orignal location, reattach them and work on figuring out what went wrong.
-SQLBill
A good suggestion would be for you to read all the FAQs on this board. They will help you realize the scope of duties and answer many of your detailed questions. Also suggest you look in the Microsoft Knowledgebase and Books Online on some of these topics to learn about them. Some of the book recommendations in the FAQ describing helpful books might help you with these topics too.
SemperFiDownUnda
Instructor
Becoming a DBA isn't something people generally Hop into. People either train for it or ease into it. As Homer can be the security officer at a nuclear powerplant so can anyone be a DBA I guess....its just if you need to actually do anything as a DBA its slightly harder then eny-meany-miney-moo.
Being a DBA includes topics such as
Back up and recovery planning
data base tuning
data base design
data base server configuration
some aspects of network server administration
Each one of those topic blow out to many sub topics
Good DBA's are worth their weight in gold. These men and women are responsible for what I concider the most important part of any modern business the the storage and retrieval of business data.
It also tends to be VERY high risk. Nothing seems to get a customer more mad then to find out that they have massive amounts of data destroyed because a "Chain of Events" happened.
From being a microsoft trainer I can tell you the the DBA stream is one stream that you could not goto the courses, do a little extra study and pass the exams. The DBA tests infer you have a good understanding of the inner principals of how databases work and relational database design, not only how to use the tools that are provided.
Being a DBA includes topics such as
Back up and recovery planning
data base tuning
data base design
data base server configuration
some aspects of network server administration
Each one of those topic blow out to many sub topics
Good DBA's are worth their weight in gold. These men and women are responsible for what I concider the most important part of any modern business the the storage and retrieval of business data.
It also tends to be VERY high risk. Nothing seems to get a customer more mad then to find out that they have massive amounts of data destroyed because a "Chain of Events" happened.
From being a microsoft trainer I can tell you the the DBA stream is one stream that you could not goto the courses, do a little extra study and pass the exams. The DBA tests infer you have a good understanding of the inner principals of how databases work and relational database design, not only how to use the tools that are provided.
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