MIS Personnel
References Training & Skills Case
September 23, 1991
As larger firms expand the number and kinds of database management systems on which they rely, job opportunities will multiply, making qualified database administrators among the most sought after IS workers in today's marketplace.
Clearly, this should come as good news to technically oriented IS professionals, who as database administrators can get starting salaries of $50,000 for maintaining the integrity, consistency and accuracy of what many companies regard as their most valuable corporate asset.
By giving its database administrators $50,000-plus salaries, Kellogg is paying for custodial care of the very heart of its operations, says David Lee, Kellogg's manager of database technology.
Kellogg's database administrators are also responsible for ensuring data integrity, testing and tuning database performance, training users in database standards and assuring the quality of all databases related applications.
At other companies, this list of responsibilities continues, especially if the employer is among the increasing number of firms that are combining the traditional functions of a database administrator with those of a data analyst or data modeler who deals with logical data issues.
One such employer is Houston-based Mitchell Energy and Development Corp., where JoAnn Gartland, a former applications developer, performs both jobs in the company's 100-person IS department.
On the database administrator side, Gartland says her responsibilities are similar to those of a database administrator at Kellogg and require expert technical skills. As a data analyst, however, she said she finds her interpersonal communications skills are most often required.
"This is because a data analyst must understand a user's perspective and what the data means to the user," she explains.
"We can have the brightest person who produces the best databases, but if he or she can't communicate and get along with the staff, their whole purpose is defeated," says Donald Holbrook, technical programming manager at Atlanta based Colonial Pipeline Co.
To fulfill this requirement, Colonial has tapped in-house programmers and systems support staff members with good communications skills and then trained them internally. But this solution has its trade-offs, chief of which, Holbrook says, is that the most technically competent person is not always hired.
"In fact, if we lost our current database administrators and we didn't have a company policy of hiring from within, I'd be tempted to go out and look on the market for replacements," Holbrook says. In doing so, he says, he could hire people with a track record in the kinds of DBMSs that Colonial employs in its operations.
One of Colonial's systems is Oracle Corp.'s Oracle relational database, the No. 1 system for which companies seek skilled database administrators, according to Suzanne Fairlie, president of Prosearch, Inc., a Philadelphia based recruitment firm.
After Oracle, database administrators skilled in IBM's DB2 and Software AG of North America's Adabas are most in demand, Fairlie says.
In Philadelphia, for example, "there is not rare breed. enough Oracle talent to go around, but nobody wants to pay relocation fees, so companies are hiring people with [Ask Computer Systems, Inc.'s] Ingres and other experience, and then training them," Fairlie says. Typically, she adds, a 100-person IS department will have three database administrators on staff.
"Most companies want experience in whatever DBMS they have," Gartland says. "But because database administrators are in demand, the next best thing is someone with an overall knowledge of database theory. If you learn one, you can learn any other one. The fundamentals don't change. What changes is the way the DBMS stores data."
One caveat for IS professionals: Not all companies advertise specifically for a database administrator, even though they seek someone who will perform a database administrator's functions.
"Every company is approaching the role of database administrator a little differently, and there is every variation of job description for this role," Fairlie says, adding that prospective database administrators may want to respond to advertisements that do not include any mention of a database administrator yet describe a database administrator's functions.
Any way you look at it, Flournoy says, qualified database administrators are a rare breed.
"Database administrators are people who are curious, tenacious and self-assured by nature rather than by training," he explains. "Not everybody has these traits, and not everyone who starts out to be a database administrator can do it well."