SQL Server Skills and Your Company (Part 2)

I work in a K-12 school district, and we have, basically, 4 (full time) people that could be considered part time DBAs.

One that focuses a bit on the data, relationships between data on our two primary systems (student info system and business system), another that focuses on security – the security is not handled within the app per se, but is handled via direct SQL privs to tables/columns, so it requires a strong understanding of the application and how it works, a third person more focused on system admin of SQL, and then me – I kind of overlap with all of them. All 4 have grown up on the software/programming side mainly, but as the in-house systems have become packages developed by outside companies, in-house programmers aren’t needed so much – but their understanding of the software/development world is still very relevant and important.

An OS/System Admin type person alone who can install SQL Server isn’t necessarily what’s needed and/or best.

But, I’m also finding that just the development side of things isn’t enough either.

With many things going web-based and distributed, an understanding of the network side is also becoming more important to have on the team as well. Application DBAs don’t often have this piece – the network sniffing, DNS, IIS, and port-
understanding people.

One other thing I’m seeing… departments in the past tended to handle their own departmental workgroup apps for the most part.

Once the vendor tells them they need to upgrade SQL to 2005, the department starts to turn things over more to the Tech Dept. Departmental apps seem to be getting more to a point where the departments can’t handle them alone so much anymore.

I’m thinking that may be partially due to the proliferation of MSDE-based apps. Initially designed as apps that controlled their own database tasks, they seem to be getting away from that so much, and expecting somebody in-house to know a bit more about the data aspects of the app.