Computer Science and Information Technology
Database Adminstration as a Career
Big Data’ is such a common buzzword these days, so let
us tell you what the fuss is all about. In simple words,
Big Data is data that is so diverse, fast changing and
substantial that those who work with it must go beyond
conventional technologies, skills and infrastructure to
use it efficiently.The boom in the IT industry has come in
tandem with an upsurge in the amount of data associated with
every organisation.
Big Data is this ever-increasing volume and velocity of data
that we have to deal with today. Over the past couple of
decades, there’s also been a shift in the
type of data stored, which now significantly comprises of
social media,
mobile data and machine data,apart from
the run-of-themill
text and numeric relational data.
According to Kamal Brar, Vice President, APAC at MongoDB
(provider
of commercial Open Source NoSQL database software), there’s
high demand for Big Data Management technology in India.
The sheer volume of online data has increased in the past
decade. In the early
2000s, the size of a traditional relational database was 7 TB.
Today, individual users are clocking around 4-5 Petabytes of
data.The world’s information is doubling every two years. In its
2011 report, IDC estimated the size of the digital
universe to be 1.8 Zettabytes. According to the study, by
2020 the world would generate 50 times the amount of
information and 75 times the number of‘ information
containers’while information managing IT
staff will tions cover a myriad of profiles such
as information research scientists, computer
system analysts, computer programmers,
network system administrators, web
developers and database administrators, to name a few.
Today, an increasing number of organisations are gathering
data about their consumers and
competitors to gain useful market insights
that can be translated into a business edge.Big
Data is only going to
get bigger, and soon it will
outstrip the capacity of the people being trained
to manage it. And the
job doesn’t simply involve crunching
numbers, but also analysing (transforming
and processing) data in a
way that renders it useful.
While the industry
has created jobs, it needs people who can find
innovative ways to efficiently utilise this
humongous amount of data.Investment in Digital
Universe (IDC Digital Universe Study 2011) How data
has changed in the pastdecade
“What has changed is how we manage and mine that data
Traditionally,a lot of data that we had was
transactional in nature. Today, we store data which is
very different in the way it’s captured − like social
media and
machineto-machine data”, Kamal elucidates.
This sensory-based data is being captured not
on an hourly basis, but every millisecond.The
data today has multiple dimensions, so
organisations grow by 1.5 times (approx).
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that by
2020, computer jobs around the world are expected to
increase at a rate of 14.3 per cent – at a faster rate
than any other occupation.It
requires a different approach. For example, people are complicated; they
have friends, a
transaction history, tweets and a plethora of other social media
components,which form a rich
complex structure that you need to understand and analyse.
The software that you
use should allow you to quickly inject the data into the data
store, and allow it to
have an analytic framework around it. It should be able to
quickly retrieve data
that’s important to you. The evolution of data has led to the
development of new database platforms such as Hadoop and
NoSQL, which meets the above requirements. These platforms
are designed to store large volumes of complex data,
which don’t nicely fit into tables. Presently there’s high
demand for
online and mobile data storage, which has also affected the
hardware being employed to keep large volumes of data online
rather than moving them to archives.
Why Database Administrator
?
A Database Administrator, or DBA, manages the database in
a way the industry demands.
To do so,he uses his programming and
administration skills. We mean that the
database administrator
is responsible for the
installation, configuration,upgrade, maintenance
and security of
an organisation’s database.The overall goal is to
keep the servers up and
running at all times and provide the users
with access to the required information when
needed. The DBA must protect the
database from damage −
accidental or intentional
− and minimise the chances of data loss.
While this is the traditional role of a DBA in
an organisation, modern times call for
more.Now just getting the
required information isn’t enough, the
database admin must find a
way to efficiently exploit the information.
“In a time where everything in this
world relies on data, and that too digital
data,we can’t compromise on accuracy and
timeliness,when
the slightest lack of
precision or delay by microseconds
may cause a
company to lose millions”, says AvinashMathur,an
Oracle DBA for a reputed
IT consulting firm.
“The role of a DBA is evolving”, explains Kamal.
Traditionally, it was about managing a
stable, relatively slow moving technology, which
is the relational database.Today, a DBA has to deal with many
aspects
and not just administration. He continued,
“Their role is moving towards making decisions on
how they can manage more complex systems built
on Big Data technologies, that
encompasses things like Hadoop, NoSQL-based
MongoDB,and
potentially existing legacy relational data stores.”
Competencies required for DBA:
If you’re considering a career in databases, you must be
skilled in Structured Query Language, or SQL, as it’s more
commonly known. SQL is a programming language designed
especially to manage and access data in a relational database
management system (RDBMS). What is an RDBMS, you
ask?
A relational database is the most common database model
that we’ve
all used at some point in our lives. The spreadsheets that you
make are a befitting example of a
relational database. If you haven’t heard
of it before, don’t worry.
RDBMS is just a fancy term geeks use
to refer to a collection of tables, in
which data is organised in rows and
columns. A database administrator
is expected to know about popular
relational database systems such
as
Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server,PostgreSQL and
IBM DB2.
Relational databases are the most common and convenient way
of organising data. However, there’s an
increasing demand for other tools to
manage data,since it isn’t always feasible to
organise data into
rows and columns. Oracle DBA, Avinash tells us
that there are various
other tools available in the market for
Big Data analytics:
• Hadoop
• NoSQL Database
• Pentaho Business Analytics
• Karmasphere Studio and Analyst
• Talend Open Studio
• Skytree Server
Apart from these, a database administrator should have a good
understanding of the operating system and network
architecture
(client/server,intranet/internet,etc)he’ll be working on.
Companies want to hire
“developers who have an understanding
of the different data storage techniques and
the type of technologies
that are used to build
applications”,according to Kamal.
Everyday
responsibilities
Let’s talk in detail about the job responsibilities of a
database
administrator.This will help you get a
good picture of what sort of work
your duty will entail.
• Database administrators decide who gets access to which part
of the database by assigning privileges to the
end users, specific to their needs.
He implements authentication and
authorisation mechanisms to
establish security of the database.
• He allocates the storage for the database in co-ordination
with the IT department of the organisation. Both,
present and future needs of the
company are kept in mind when planning
the storage capacity of the database.
• Database administrators should be well aware of the
functioning of the database management system, and tackle all
the technical problems that may arise.
• He writes and continually updates the documentation for the
database.A database with an inconsistent or obsolete
documentation is difficult to maintain − especially for people
who didn’t originally design it and will be working on it
in the future.
