Example Career: Database Administrators

Career Description

Administer, test, and implement computer databases, applying knowledge of database management systems. Coordinate changes to computer databases. Identify, investigate, and resolve database performance issues, database capacity, and database scalability. May plan, coordinate, and implement security measures to safeguard computer databases.

What Job Titles Database Administrators Might Have

• Database Administration Manager
• Database Administrator (DBA)
• Database Analyst
• Systems Administrator (Systems Admin)

What Database Administrators Do

• Modify existing databases and database management systems or direct programmers and analysts to make changes.
• Plan, coordinate, and implement security measures to safeguard information in computer files against accidental or unauthorized damage, modification or disclosure.
• Plan and install upgrades of database management system software to enhance database performance.
• Specify users and user access levels for each segment of database.
• Test changes to database applications or systems.
• Test programs or databases, correct errors, and make necessary modifications.
• Train users and answer questions.
• Provide technical support to junior staff or clients.
• Approve, schedule, plan, and supervise the installation and testing of new products and improvements to computer systems, such as the installation of new databases.
• Develop standards and guidelines for the use and acquisition of software and to protect vulnerable information.
• Write and code logical and physical database descriptions and specify identifiers of database to management system, or direct others in coding descriptions.
• Develop data models describing data elements and how they are used, following procedures and using pen, template, or computer software.
• Select and enter codes to monitor database performance and to create production databases.
• Identify, evaluate and recommend hardware or software technologies to achieve desired database performance.
• Review procedures in database management system manuals to make changes to database.

What Database Administrators Should Be Good At

• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
• Near Vision - The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).

What Database Administrators Should Be Interested In

• Investigative - Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

What Database Administrators Need to Learn

• Computers and Electronics - Knowledge of circuit boards, processors, chips, electronic equipment, and computer hardware and software, including applications and programming.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Telecommunications - Knowledge of transmission, broadcasting, switching, control, and operation of telecommunications systems.
• Mathematics - Knowledge of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, statistics, and their applications.