Are database administrators doomed?

Database administration has always been something of a well kept secret. Even within the wider domain of information technology, database administration is one of those areas of expertise that often goes overlooked by aspiring STEM students and tech-savvy job seekers.

Nevertheless, it’s an area for which expertise is in consistently high demand. And at a time when the futures of many professions have been darkened by the pall of AI-fueled uncertainty, database administration remains ripe with opportunity. For both those already in the field and those looking to enter it, I’m confident that there will be no shortage of demand for skilled professionals for the foreseeable future.

With that being said, it would be disingenuous of me to suggest it’s nothing but smooth sailing ahead for the field and its practitioners—especially for those already bearing the title of database administrator (DBA). As is the case for practically every profession today, the flurry of advancements happening in AI have serious implications for the DBAs of the world. In fact, I’d say there’s a very good chance that the title of DBA itself will soon become scarce among corporate org charts.

Still, the future is far from doom and gloom for DBAs. Provided they’re willing and able to adapt, the professionals currently in these roles needn’t fear obsolescence. On the contrary, I believe that today’s DBAs will likely see their professional prospects expand and their careers grow as a result of the changes to come over the next few years.

Seeking job security? Go where the data is

Before delving into the specifics of those changes, though, it would be negligent to not at least acknowledge the enormous changes that are taking place in and around data itself. In relatively little time, we’ve seen an explosion in the volume, variety, and value of data collected, stored, and analyzed by the average corporation. What was once the exclusive domain of developers and accountants is now essential to virtually every aspect of business decision-making. Whether you’re in marketing, PR, or human resources, making a decision of any material significance without the guidance of data has become something of a cardinal sin. Moving forward, the rate of growth will only accelerate as more organizations find more uses for more data across more parts of their operations.

If for no other reason than this, I think it’s safe to assume that database administrators will remain valuable assets to corporations for quite some time. Add to that the increasingly significant role of AI and the growing interest in proprietary solutions and I feel quite confident that the de facto guardians of enterprise data will have a place in the corporate world for some time to come.

Devops: A blueprint for the future of database administration

With that being said, the actual title of “database administrator” may soon become a thing of the past. If for no other reason then it will no longer adequately reflect the totality of these professionals’ roles and responsibilities. At the same time, the skills of today’s DBAs will continue to be in high demand. But, rather than being cast away, they will be recast as one facet of the role and one slice of the core responsibilities of this new brand of database professionals.

While it’s hard to know with absolute certainty exactly what shape such a role will take, I think we can look to other recent developments in the professional landscape—like that of devops—for clues as to what it might look like.

Just like devops blended developer and operations skills, database expertise will soon focus more on how infrastructural decisions will affect the way data operates further down the chain. The new duties and decision-making responsibilities will include things like determining how architecture will affect data interpretation and how to make data processes more efficient through changes at the infrastructural level.

Rather than looking at performance reports and seeking to fix the loudest, most glaring inefficiencies (like plucking the tallest, most unsightly weeds from a densely packed garden), tomorrow’s database professionals will approach optimization with the entire data pipeline in mind (considering the conditions of the soil, the relative positioning of each plant, and which crops are most essential to the community it feeds).

Big picture thinking will be key for tomorrow’s DBAs

As a result, it will be increasingly important for DBAs to incorporate new skills into their professional repertoires—especially those traditionally associated with data analytics and data science—which will allow them to more readily see data in context and recognize the bigger picture of database operations.

This “full-pipeline view”—from the generation of operational data as transactions take place, all the way to analysis and re-use—is something that many of the largest enterprises have already begun to take into consideration. Now, small and mid-sized businesses will need to do the same. And these organizations will undoubtedly need help making the right choices on what they use to support their applications and how they can make it easier to utilize and interpret their data over time. This will require a blend of knowledge and abilities, including how to use architecture more effectively and how to deliver the right outcomes using the right frameworks.

To help illustrate this paradigmatic shift, consider how today’s DBAs might look at query performance. Traditionally, DBAs would focus on the reports and queries that took the longest to execute and then work to optimize them. This could then lead to better performance for the slowest of queries.

However this does not take into account how often those queries get performed. That slow query might run just once a week, or even once a month—in which case, while improving it would certainly be a positive, the overall benefit to one’s operations would be small. On the other hand, optimizing queries that are used daily—even those that are generally considered to be “fine” or acceptable—can have far greater impact, despite the actual improvement being relatively marginal.

In order to reach these types of insights and recognize such opportunities, data professionals will have to collaborate much more closely with developers and business teams, as well as adopting a more comprehensive view and understanding of their organization’s data operations.

For those who are willing and able to make this mental shift, I believe their careers will not simply survive the coming changes, but thrive as a result. So, whether it be a DBA by another name, or someone new to the field moving directly into the role, I believe the future looks bright.

Bennie Grant is chief operating officer at Percona.

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