The Fading Role of the DBA

I l @ ve RuBoard

In the early years of e-commerce, the database administrator (DBA) was someone whose sole responsibility was the care and feeding of the database. In those days, setting up (for example) an Oracle instance was a monumental effort, and having someone who knew all the pitfalls to do it for you was a real benefit.

Well, those days are over. Modern databases are much more simple to set up and maintain, and the developer doesn't have the luxury of leaving all the database maintenance to another person anymore. Modern applications coexist with their database back ends like conjoined twins, so the developer needs to be an integral part of the database design.

That said, there's still a place for dedicated database professionals. When you start dealing with the very high end of the database spectrum (multiple redundant servers, geographically distributed databases, or highly tuned schemas), you still might need to call in these database specialists.

I l @ ve RuBoard