A_Day_In_The_Life

A DAY IN THE LIFE

What's a typical workday like for a DBA? Kyte explains that DBAs typically spend most of their time managing user accounts and privileges, implementing changes from developers and data modelers, tuning databases for peak efficiency, and performing maintenance tasks such as backup and data recovery. "They are also heavily involved in security and its implementation," he said.

According to Oracle Education's career path description, Oracle DBAs must master the skills necessary to set up, maintain, diagnose, tune, and troubleshoot an Oracle database, as well as configure and troubleshoot Oracle's Net8 networking products. Wood points out that on a daily basis, the DBA functions as 'a support person,' and is responsible for ensuring that the company's database servers are up and running. "DBAs are responsible and meticulous individuals, willing to support others in the organization," he said.