What’s a DBA to do in a cloud world where platform as a service and PaaS-like automation seemingly removes much of the need to constantly car for pet databases? Well, there’s still troves of existing databases left and, really, things aren’t that perfect in cloud-land. I spoke with Klint Finley on this topic last week for his story on Heroku. He asked, “are the days of the DBA numbered? to which I responded:
I don’t think the DBAs days are numbered just yet. Last I checked, the US bureau of labor statistics is actually predicting an increase, if that’s anything. DBAs definitely need to learn new technologies and be less gruff about helping developers out.
Consistently, I see developers driving the use of cloud across the market (ask any vendor what their cloud stuff is use for and it typically amounts to delivering custom written applications: developers) which means DBAs need to start talking with developers more. The other important thing to realize is how much "traditional” IT exists out there now. I can’t figure out how to calculate it (yet) but I feel like we’re just scratching the surface of The Great Cloud Rewrite over the next 10 years in the enterprise space. That’s were DBAs have a strong hold and if they get cloud religion soon enough, they can set themselves up nicely.
DBAs actually have a wealth of knowledge and it’d be painful for developers to have to rediscover and learn all of that. That said, if all DBAs do is say “no, and it’s going to take 6 weeks,” they’ll be dead.
The plight of the DBA - Press Pass