Monday, January 18, 2010

Accidental DBA?

It seems to me that over the last year or so that there has been an explosion in the use of the term “Accidental DBA” in the SQL Server community.  A google Bing search for “Accidental DBA” returns over 7 million results including blog posts, articles, editorials, and video training.  Since I’ve only been a SQL Server DBA and involved in the SQL Server community I don’t know if there is a similar term with other RDBMS products like Oracle or DB2, but I can say that I “accidentally” became a SQL Server DBA, it wasn’t the career I planned on in college, nor once I entered the Information Technology field.  The interesting thing is that many of the people I respect in the SQL Server community did not originally become SQL Server DBA’s by choice.  Andy Leonard (@AndyLeonard) says he became a SQL Server DBA because “I was the closest one to the SQL Server when the DBA left”.
So how did I end up a SQL Server DBA?  Well, it’s a long story that I’ll try to make short.  I started out by getting a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education and then I learned that working with children was probably not a strength.  I struggled for awhile and thought I’d like to get into IT, and I thought I’d enjoy network and system administration, but, through a good friend I got a job as a software developer working with Access, Visual Basic, SQL Server, Sybase, and DB2 400.  As I worked with each of the technologies I found that I had an aptitude for SQL Server and here I am 10 years later, looking for ways to share the things I’ve learned and finding that the more I know, the more I need to learn.
So how did you become involved with SQL Server?

1 comment:

  1. 20 years ago I was a 1 man IT shop, even administering a Novell network. Then my next job was just programming. So was the next until I took an InterBase DBA (much simpler administration than MS SQL Server) "promotion" (no pay increase) to prove I wanted to move forward & not stagnate, when I realized there was no room for promotion, I turned down the Oracle DBA position and went back to programming in the transition happy to leave "DBA" behind. My next job was programming with SQL Server, then the boss came in one day & said "I just had a meeting with HR about job titles and I made yours Sr. Developer/DBA" and I was DBA again! Now I'm part of a 4 amn IT dept. where we all do everything, but since the other 3 have essentially no SQL experience (MS SQL Server or otherwise), I'm the DBA again for all practial purposes.

    I'll let you decide if that qualifies as "Accidental DBA".

    ReplyDelete

So what do you think I am?