Database Administration Learn Guide

As businesses gather, store, analyze and distribute increasing volumes of data, jobs for skilled database administrators are expected to increase faster than the average growth rate for all professions. With this kind of potential on the purview, and with all the other enriching opportunities that comes with it, it is not surprising that so many people are viewing it as a prosperous career option.?

In this article, we have comprised all the important details like educational qualifications, technical and non-technical skill set, along with learning methodologies, to help you take a closer look at it. You may also explore our all-inclusive learn guide for database administration, the details of which are mentioned towards the end.?

Database Administration

A database administrator plays a significant role in any company that deals with volumes of structured and unstructured data collected from numerous sources. They help in organizing, handling, maintaining and updating the collected data systematically for other stakeholders to use and make robust business decisions.?

Educational Prerequisites

The minimum educational qualification required to become a database administrator is a bachelor’s degree in fields like Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or a similar major. These programs lay the foundation for data management and computer security.?

Learning Methodologies

Mostly, companies prefer to hire people with certification and DBA (Database Administrator) training in the specialized database software. Thus, there are two alternative paths you can take to get certified in these specialized courses and gain desired knowledge before entering this field.

The first is the e-learning path; this is ideal for those who want to take online certification courses or go for crash courses to provide relevant skills and knowledge. The second one is the traditional path; this is ideal for those who want to pursue a master’s degree in database administration or any related field.???

In this line of work, online training surpasses the competencies and benefits of offline courses. And so, in our opinion, e-learning is the most cost-effective and user-friendly alternative to take up.?

Skills Required

Soft Skills

These are also known as people skills and add a lot of value to a database administrator’s effectiveness and career growth. Let’s quickly go through them:

• Communication: Database administrators are expected to have solid communication skills as their job role will require them to explain ideas in a simple and clear way to non-technical team members and executives within a company. You need to have excellent interpersonal skills as you will be required to write a lot of emails, memos, briefings, etc.?
• Analytical: This refers to analyzing large chunks of data and extracting relevant information in order to develop requisite data-driven solutions.?
• Organizational: When data is organized systematically and logically, it can be smoothly accessible by users, which will lead to effective database performance.?
• Problem-solving: This defines a large part of your day-to-day functions. You will encounter a lot of problems, so you must be skilled at resolving issues based on data integrity and backup to prevent any database glitch.

Technical Skills

A DBA needs to possess sound technical skills to understand and analyze the configuration and propose changes accordingly. Let’s briefly overview them:

• Introduction to Databases: You must know beforehand what a database is, its operations and functions. By being well-read with the basics of databases, will help you in strengthening your foundation as a DBA professional.???
• SQL: It stands for ‘Structured Query Language’ and has a wider role in reading, molding, changing and displaying data. It is specifically useful in managing relational databases.?
• NoSQL: It stands for ‘Not only SQL’ and has the capacity to handle large datasets. It has various databases such as Cassandra, MongoDB, and Amazon DynamoDB. Among these, MongoDB is the most extensively used NoSQL database.?
• Database Warehousing: It is a data management system used to reinforce business intelligence activities. Some of its important concepts are OLAP architecture design and data warehouse models.?
• Database from Oracle and Microsoft: It is extremely crucial to be well seasoned with some basic database management systems, as they are the crux of database administration. The Oracle database incorporates SQL and NoSQL databases. While Microsoft’s database platform,? Microsoft Access, yields outstanding GUIs and software tools.?
• Introduction to Cloud Computing: Cloud computing and database management together deliver DBaaS(database-as-a-service). It means that a database can be stored on a cloud and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.?

Other Technical Skills

These are some other technical skills that an organization looks for in a candidate. Let’s closely look into them:?

• Excel: You are expected to have good knowledge about this. Moreover, being familiar with some of its advanced tools such as VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, PIVOT tables can be beneficial for you and increase your chances of securing a bright future in this field.?
• Python: It is one of the most widely used data science programming languages. It is also looked upon by many people as it is an open-source programming language.???
• MongoDB: It is a NoSQL database and is commonly used to store data in ‘JSON- like’ documents.?
• Amazon Web Services: It consists of a relational database referred to as Amazon Relational Database Service, which helps in navigating the scalability of the cloud.?
• Microsoft Azure: This is a cloud computing platform that has its own SQL database.?

Final Thoughts

On the whole, more and more marketers are now finding ways to harvest information from users and customers, specifically from online sites. And the movement toward gathering and leveraging this data is expected to rise for the probable future. Thus, database administrators will be one of the principal receivers of this greed for information and its many rewards. So, if you’re interested in beginning your career in database administration, then go through our well-elaborated Learn Guide that includes details about educational background, skills required, relevant courses available, and potential career prospects.?