The Evolution of the DBA Begins at Collaborate 2018

The highlights will include an incredible focus on Oracle’s autonomous database, version 18c, along with the Oracle cloud.

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Collaborate 2018 is just around the corner, commencing April 21-26, 2018 in Las Vegas, NV at the Mandalay Resort. The highlights will include an incredible focus on Oracle’s autonomous database, version 18c, along with the Oracle cloud and I’m posed with the question — “What is the future of the DBA?” as part of the Capstone panel to close the conference on Thursday, April 26th.

I continue to be surprised at those challenged by the idea that the Database Administrator role is under attack. I had assumed that tedious tasks were, and I was quite fine with that fact, feeling rather irritated with the idea that the role was what was disappearing. As many know, the database administrator role covers a large swath of technical demands, as data is central to so much of any technology. Although part of my job, I’ve never been interested in performing backups, installing software or patching databases and it’s the first thing I automate with scripts and tools. Once automated, I could isolate the real challenges for the company to get the most out of their data and begin to prioritize how to address the areas that fell in my area of responsibility.

There are significant reasons I find most of the tasks addressed by the autonomous database from Oracle less than appealing, too:

I’m multi-platform. As the industry begins to shift to many sources of data to provide the most complete picture for the business to make decisions, my ability to manage them all has become an asset, but to do that, time consuming tasks that can be automated will assist in my ability to do more with less resources.
I’m constantly picking up new skills and automation is a skill I’ve had as part of my DBA role for quite some time. Automation makes me a natural fit for DevOps, which again, adds business value to the role of the DBA.
I possess deep system optimization skills. With so many environments migrating to the cloud, this offers increased opportunity to utilize this skill and need for the business to have it in-house. You can’t just simply shift left, as many like to tell you. You’re often required to change how you’ve previously performed tasks to eliminate unnecessary charges in the cloud, not just on storage consumption, but data in flight and unnecessary demands on processing. I know we’re also told that the autonomous database will address tuning issues, but lets be honest — this may address most environments, but there’s commonly one database in every company that is unique or an outlier requiring deeper knowledge to address those challenges.

There is an old idea that a task that takes considerable resource time but not increased skills is still a value to a company. The cloud has changed much of this, too. Those IT organizations that don’t start moving as fast as the business aren’t going to have a business to serve. Requests for hardware, ordering time, build time and configuration isn’t what it used to be. The ability to acquire and scale, especially with SaaS makes it a simple and almost instantaneous process to get what the business needs, often up and running in as little as a single day.

I may be a database administrator, but my skills have scaled with technology. I want to provide not only what my customer needs, but to offer myself a better career with better opportunities provide value, to be productive and to learn new skills. The outlook is quite sunny in the world of the database professional, you just need to know how to see through the clouds and onto the future.

Collaborate 2018 Speaking Sessions:

Brian Bent scheduled presentation...

· OAUG Archive/Purge SIG (Special Interest Group)

o Abstract

o Time: Wed 25-April 2018 at 9:45am - 10:45am PDT

o Location: Breakers B

o Co-presenters: Michael Barone and Mark Lee of Solix

Kellyn Pot'Vin Gorman scheduled presentations...

· IOUG session 1204: "Empowering Every Data In The Cloud"

o Abstract

o Time: Thu 26-April 2018 at 8:30am - 9:30am PDT

o Location: Banyan B