What do you think are the minimum skills a person should have before they are allowed to manage a database? Does it matter whether or not it’s a production database? Does it matter how much data is there? What kind of data? Is recovery a goal or a symptom? Does it matter how old you are? Or how old the database is? What is the meaning of all this anyway?
Thomas LaRock ( blog | @sqlrockstar ) and I will be talking about what a Minimalist DBA is, what skills we think they need, and how to ensure that they have them on 3 December at Noon EST for the DBA Fundamentals Virtual Chapter of PASS.
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"The best DBA is a lazy DBA…or at least a Minimalist DBA"Every profession has a core set of responsibilities that are expected of every practitioner. For anyone that has the letters “DBA” in their job description their job function is a black box to anyone on the outside. "What do you do here?" is a common question for most DBAs.
Some DBAs are a part-time data modelers, SAN admins, VM admins. Sometimes they know all about security, or Active Directory, or .NET. It differs from one shop to another. Whether it is day one or one hundred in your career as a DBA you need to make certain you stay focused on your core duties. If you slip up then you will find out why DBA often stands for Default Blame Acceptor.
Attend this webinar to make sure that no matter what your level of efficiency and laziness you are able to focus on the bare essentials (the minimum) necessary to be a Rockstar DBA."
Karen Lopez is a senior project manager and architect for InfoAdvisors. A frequent speaker at conferences and local user groups, she has 20+ years of experience in project and data management on large, multi-project programs. Karen is a chronic volunteer, a SQL Server MVP, and an active advocate for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and data quality. She isn’t a DBA, but loves to talk and debate about the effectiveness of lazy DBAs. She isn’t sure if the minimalist thing is a strength or an excuse.
Thomas LaRock is a Microsoft Certified Master, a SQL Server MVP, a VMWare vExpert, and a Microsoft Certified Trainer with over 15 years’ experience in the IT industry in various roles such as programmer, developer, analyst, and database administrator. He is also the author of “DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA” (http://dbasurvivor.com) and has participated in the technical review of several other books.
Currently, Thomas is a Technical Evangelist for Confio Software. This role allows for him to work with a variety of customers to help solve questions regarding database performance tuning and virtualization. Thomas also serves on the Board of Directors for PASS as Vice President of Marketing. You can find out more information about him at his blog: http://thomaslarock.com/resume/.
You can probably expect our usual level of snark, debate, levity and great info for this presentation. Bring your ideas and snark, too. I always ensure that the audience is part of the presentation, so expect more the a slew of bullet points and demos. And even though this is hosted by a SQL Server organization, all we will be talking about will be applicable to multiple platforms. That’s how real enterprise database systems are anyway, right?
You’ll need to register, but it’s free. By the way, if you also register on that site, you’ll become a member of that chapter. And that’s free, too.