Development vs. Administration

To build a house, you need an architect to design the house and tradesmen (plumbers, electricians, and carpenters) to build the house according the architect's plan. Database developers are the architects and builders of database systems. After the house is built, you will need to perform routine maintenance on the house and possibly make modifications or additions to the structure. Generally, you need tradesmen to act as maintenance and repair workers to accomplish these tasks. Database administrators are the repair and maintenance workers of the database world. They monitor the operation of the database and make improvements and modifications when necessary to ensure the smooth flow of data.

There are normally two versions of a database, the "production" and "development" versions. The "production" version is the one that is in current use. Up time (the time that a database is available for use) is critical with the production version since employees and customers may need to access and use the database at any time. Consider the production version of the Amazon.com customer order database. When you go onto Amazon you need the database to be available so you can place your book order. The fulfillment department at Amazon needs the customer order database to be functional so they can pack and ship your order. Maintaining and improving performance of the production database is the primary role of the database administrator. Troubleshooting current problems (such as corrupt indexes or lack of disk space) that occur during day-to-day use of the database is critical to achieving a high percentage of up time. Database administrators need to be available any time there is a problem, so they often carry beepers and cell phones and are required to be "on call" outside of normal working hours.

The "development" version of a database is where all the tinkering and design work takes places. Layout of tables, programming and connection of the database to other software programs is laid out in the production version. In this way, new plans can be tested without affecting the "live" data in the production database or affecting its up time. Database developers primarily work with the development version of a database.

Some doctors choose to specialize in a particular field after taking their base training in medical school. Depending upon the specialty, this requires an additional one to three years of schooling. A similar situation occurs in IT since database administrators and developers are often trained IT professionals who choose to specialize in databases. Database administrators need to be familiar with the operating systems that their databases are running under (such as UNIX or Windows 2000). This is necessary since many operational problems of databases require solutions that are specific to a particular operating system. Therefore, being trained in network administration as well as well as database administration gives you a competitive edge when seeking employment. Similarly, many database developers have training in programming since database development (such as development of SQL queries and interfacing databases with other systems) requires familiarity with programming languages and concepts. Therefore, a solid programming background in addition to database design skills will make you stand out from the competition when applying for a job.

In small and medium size corporations the lines between development and administration become blurred. Often, database personnel are called on to fill both roles at different times. For instance, your primary focus may be developing the next version of a customer service database. But, you may also be required to be "on call" for a certain number of hours per week to solve day-to-day problems with the production database. Being a jack-of-all-trades (someone who can handle both development and administration) makes you a valuable addition to any database team.