How to become a Database Administrator

For ensuring the security of the millions of data being generated each day, Database administrators (DBAs) are tasked with creating and maintaining the databases of information. There has been tremendous growth in the demand in the field of information security as data organisation has become necessary for many industries. Using specialised software, DBAs manage, store, and organise data to make it available as needed. In short, they ensure the availability of the data that is produced and consumed by the IT systems. Their work is of critical importance to the organisations since they keep sensitive information secure from unauthorised access, such as financial records, customer details etc.

A database administrator hence is tasked with the development, storage, and recovery of the database, for a fast, easy, secure, uninterrupted access to information. The DBA professional plays an instrumental role in the IT environment of those organisations which rely on databases to store and access information. As an employee in any organisation, the DBA’s work shall prevent occurrences such as application shutdowns or slowdowns and downtime that might lead to a business outage, thereby ensuring a positive customer experience.

A database administrator typically assumes the following roles and responsibilities:

• Designing, creating, and implementing the database system, as well as ensuring it is integrated with any existing system in place
• To generate backups of the information and check them regularly as well as restore it when necessary to ensure usability, and implement preventative tasks
• To troubleshoot and safeguard the systems through root cause analysis and resolve the error to optimise the performance of the database
• Work towards maintaining and upgrading the system, database server, or application software as required
• Install and set up the IT infrastructure to ensure system security by granting access to authorized persons only by allocating user-profiles and permissions carefully
• To account for the physical necessities of the system by planning and distributing the same such as network supply, memory and disk space etc.
• Creating the training manual and materials to ensure proper usage and secure access to the system and its facilities by authorised persons
• To ensure that the data analyst is able to utilize the relevant information easily
• To take care of timely license renewals and usage of the same is in compliance with the license agreements
• Modifying the database as necessary using the information and suggested supplied by the application developers for an efficient application design for database access

A database administrator career necessitates having a mix of certain soft skills as well as hard skills in order to master the field. Technical aptitude, as well as certain pre-existing personal skills, are of critical importance to this job. To start with, they need to have the requisite knowledge of the standard language used by the database, Structured Query Language (SQL) as well as software vendor certifications. The ease with using the relevant software such as Oracle, Linux, MS Access, IBM etc are key to performing well on the job. They must be thorough with the relevant technical facts regarding the systems and platforms in use.

Since they have to frequently work in collaboration with other professionals and stakeholders, they should be able to function as a team member as well as a leader, communicating effectively with the team they are supervising as well as technology and executive management professionals. They are entrusted with making cost-effective decisions regarding the technology and staff requirements for the database system usability, which makes business knowledge another priority for DBAs. They must also possess the ability to systematically analyse data, pay careful attention to detail, along with excellent troubleshooting skills.

They need to have the ability to think methodically in order to logically resolve an issue via the process of reasoning by elimination. Inquisitiveness and the continued desire to learn are other necessary aspects of a DBA to keep their skills and knowledge from becoming stagnant since the field of technology is undergoing rapid advancements.