A Follow-up to Database Professionals: An Enterprise Requirement

andyleonard — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 01:07:00 GMT

Eric Wise drew some heat from the developer community at CodeBetter.com with this post about the need for a DBA during development (see my post on the subject here).

I think Eric makes a couple good points, one explicit, one implied:

1. (Explicit) A DBA - or Database Developer, more accurately (and there is a difference) - adds value to development.

2. (Implicit) There are Software Developers out there who can step into the Database Developer role long enough to solve most database tuning issues. Eric demonstrates this with himself in profiling and addressing a missing or ill-defined index.

I find most of the comments - presumably by software developers - typical. One developer stated:

My current project didn't have a DBA for 2 years, until recently since we're now at the stage of optimizing for performance. It seems to me that as long as the database is intelligently structured in the first place, a DBA's role would be rather small in most cases.

I agree with the sentiment expressed here - as much as I agree that code-generation tools can replace application developers. It's true that you can utilize SQL Server or any database engine as a dumb file store. And it's equally true that you can build an enterprise application in C# that consists of thousands upon thousands of lines of nested If... Then... Else statements.

</sarcasm>

The question is: Why would you?

This goes beyond arguments over syntax, coding standards, methodology, and design philosophy. This is about putting competent professionals - at the height of their game - into the mix on a project.

You don't have to take my word for it - ask software developers who have worked (or are working) with competent database developers.

:{> Andy

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A Follow-up to Database Professionals: An Enterprise Requirement