Sorry I’ve not posted for a while. Much travel for work. Behind on study. Being sued by a scam website. You know – the usual.

But I read a thing – and I laughed – and I got fired up – and now I want to write a thing.

Thank you to the Scary DBA (b|t) and the DevOps DBA (b|t) for expressing your views on the idea that the DBA does not have a place in the new world order of DevOps, Continuous Delivery and ALM. Apparently tools like Octopus, Puppet and “THE CLOUD” mean that DBAs are going to become obsolete.

Because if you have tools you don’t need DBA’s. Didn’t you get that memo?

The fact is that the amount of data the world is storing is increasing at astronomical rates and the issues around storing it and developing our data structures safely at ever increasing speeds can be handled by tools and #DevOps.

It’s not a problem at all because we can stop using relational databases and switch to other technologies. Because that’s the intention of DevOps afterall – to replace Ops with more developers. Looking back, they probably meant to call it DevDevs? Right?

Or not.

Could it be that managing the data is actually getting harder and harder?

I wonder who are the sorts of people who understand the problems associated with that?

Maybe we need to rename DBAs? Grant (Scary DBA) Fritchey coined the term “NotCalledDBAs“. Or not. Whatever we call them, perhaps there will still be a space for todays’ DBAs in this new devOPS order? As long as they develop their skills, just like all other professionals.

And for the DBAs who don’t want to learn new skills and move with the times, sure, they probably won’t last long. But that’s true of developers, systems administrators and, frankly, people in pretty much any other profession. I’m pretty sure Healthcare, Engineering, Marketing, Education and pretty much every other industry changes over time too. Not just database administration.

(PS. Gotta read DevOps DBA’s latest post: “Hi, I’m your NotCalledDBA. How can I help you?”)