Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
On many projects, a database administrator (DBA) can often feel like a
short-order cook. DBAs typically have analytical skills that took many
years to cultivate, but they often spend most of their time performing
low-level command tasks. What's more, this job role can also be
stressful, because the DBA often becomes a development bottleneck as
the team members wait for the DBA to apply one small change to the
database after another. Here's a familiar scenario.
Nona (Developer):
Hi Julie, will you set up a development database
for me on the shared development machine?
Julie (DBA):
I am in the middle of something. I should be able to set it
up later this afternoon. Would you like the data from last week or an
export of today's data?
Nona:
Today's data.
Julie:
Okay, I can have that for you by tomorrow morning.
10 minutes later…
Scott (Technical Lead):
I am unable to perform testing on the test
server because there are no assigned records for the Reviewer role.
Julie:
Oh, let me create some test records that are assigned this role. I
think Nona may have used up all of those records.
Scott:
Thanks. While you're at it, would you remove the Y/N con-
straint on the APPROVED columns on the PERSON table? We'd like
to use different flags on this column.
It's more of the same on a typical day for the DBA. Not only is this
a poor use of the DBA's talents, it causes a significant bottleneck, espe-
cially in the continuous approach promoted by CI. If you asked any
DBA what they'd rather do on a day-to-day basis, they would probably
tell you that they'd rather spend time on data normalization, improving
performance, or developing and enforcing standards, not giving people
database access or recreating databases and refreshing test data. In this
section, you'll see how you can automate these repetitive tasks so both
the DBA's and the team's time is spent on improving the efficacy and
