What Does Database Administrator (DBA) Mean?
A database administrator, frequently known just by the acronym DBA, is a role usually within the Information Technology department, charged with the creation, maintenance, backups, querying, tuning, user rights assignment and security of an organization’s databases.
The role requires technical training and expertise in the specific RDBMS used by the organization, in addition to other skills such as analytical thinking and ability to concentrate on tasks, as well as experience working with databases in the real world. The DBA role is a critical member of the IT team.
Techopedia Explains Database Administrator (DBA)
- Administrative DBA – maintains the servers and databases and keeps them running. Concerned with backups, security, patches, replication. These are activities mostly geared towards maintaining the database and software platform, but not really invloved in enhancing or developing it.
- Development DBA - works on building SQL queries, stored procedures, and so on, that meet business needs. This is the equivalent of a programmer, but specializing in database development. Commonly combined the the role of Administrative DBA.
- Data Architect – designs schemas, builds tables indexes, data structures and relationships. This role works to build a structure that meets a general business needs in a particular area. For instance, a software company will use data architects to build a design for the database of a new commercial application system for running a bank’s operations. The design is then used by developers and development DBAs to implement the actual application.
- Data Warehouse DBA - this is a relatively newer role, responsible for merging data from multiple sources into a data warehouse. May have to design the data warehouse as well as cleaning up and standardizing the data before loading using specialist data loading and transformation tools.
