Ayman
Good evening friends, some minutes ago I had a conversation with arithma we were discussing some issues about the future of languages and technologies and one thing we were talking about is the future of DBAs in the business world. Some years ago I was hearing that DBAs are in great demand especially oracle certified ones for banks and similar organizations in Lebanon.
Yet recently I have been hearing the opposite, I am hearing that in cases where apps and complete solutions are to be developed for organizations DBAs have no more place or role to have and thats why demand on them is decreasing. Do you agree with this? Do you have any insights about this issue or any experience from the real world? Are there any people currently employed as DBAs here? Please feel free to share your opinion and insight about the subject, have a good day :)
arithma
It depends on the company. Usually, you'll find a DBA in a rather non-development company. Otherwise developers usually take the role of designing the applications. As a developer, you probably don't want the misfortune of working against the dictations of a DBA of an external company.
Kassem
I do not really understand the role of a DBA. He's supposed to maintain the database server, ok that's all good. He also has to give privileges/roles and/or views to the users of the database (probably the different departments of a company), but seriously, isn't that the role of the developer and how he/she designs the application?
A job position I find to be essential in any development company is the System Analyst. With today's advanced technologies and frameworks, I see the only tough part in developing a website or an application is getting the model right. once you design a normalized database, all what's left is straight forward coding. And in case you got stuck on an exception, you can google the error code and you'll find tons of solutions.
Conclusion: Yes I do agree that the DBA position is kinda obsolete in today's world.
Ayman
I agree with you guys about what you are saying but today as I woke up I was thinking about the issue and I got some interesting questions.
It is true that the increased automation of the original roles of a DBA is taking place but what if: Automated tasks fail? There are always new demands from the business for reporting and information management tasks that change by time and the software that was built like 5 years ago cant fulfill all these wishes anymore. Shall the business order the company to write new software with new automations, tasks and functions? There must be someone who has very deep understanding of the business to carry out the reactive role in case something goes wrong I think.
Also who said that the software and database that was designed and built matches the business needs 100% ? There would always be mistakes made by the system analysts when designing and analyzing the system.
What I am talking about here is not small organizations with less than 30 employees which is the case with most Lebanese organizations.
From what I think is going on is that the role of a DBA instead of becoming obsolete it could be evolving from being proactive to becoming reactive. Maybe even a DBA should be become an integral part of the system itself.
Any ideas about the issue?