SQL Server dba
Microsoft SQL Server DBA (database administration)
Microsoft SQL Server is a modern database engine, a relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Microsoft. In easy words the Microsoft SQL Server is a comprehensive, data management software. Its primary query language is Transact-SQL, an implementation of the ANSI/ISO standard Structured Query Language (SQL) used by both Microsoft and Sybase.
SQL Server DBA are mostly self taught personals who learned sql server database administration on job. As far as i know no university awards database administrator degree, each vendor have designed some kind of certification like Microsoft awards MCDBA certification if you pass exams related to SQL Server. If you hold MCDBA then you are called certified SQL Server dba, many of the DBA's i know started as developer and slowly moved to administration tasks, mostly because no full time database administrator was present in the company. It is very hard to describe what exactly a database administrator do specially to higher management of any company.
Database Administrators are important part of any large corporation specially if the data is larger then 5 GB in production database. Depending on type of company and industry we can classify database administrators in 3 categories. Production SQL Server DBA's, QA and UAT DBA and Development DBA, small businesses have usually one man show.
What does SQL Server DBA do:
SQL Server Production DBA
- Administering SQL Server Production Database.
- Backup and Restore.
- Monitoring SQL Server Jobs.
- Installing, Configuring database servers.
- Troubleshooting SQL Server production issues.
- Capacity planning and monitoring database growth.
- Replication management.
- Managing SQL Server security and logins.
- Importing Exporting data using DTS, SSIS packages.
- Designing disaster recovery strategies.
- Building rebuilding indexes.
- Dealing with performance issues on production servers.
- Moving objects from QA to Production databases.
SQL Server QA / UAT DBA
- Reviewing SQL Server database objects
- Code review and making sure code comply with current company standards.
- Testing of T-SQL Scripts.
- Testing the patches before deploying on production.
- Working with application developers to know how front end application work and testing results.
- Indexing database and making sure required indexes are present on all objects.
SQL Server Development DBA
- Database Development.
- Writing T-SQL statements.
- T-SQL code review to make sure its not going to become a performance night mare.
- Providing suggestions for database development tasks.
- Working with data architects to design database.
- Cleaning data.
- Indexing database tables.
The above list is not a complete job description of Database administrator, In many companies job description consist of much more then the duties listed on this page.