So, how might life change for DBAs as organizations embrace Big Data? That’s a loaded question. Life is always changing for DBAs! The DBA is at the center of new application development and therefore is always learning new technologies – not always database-related technologies. Big Data will have a similar impact. There is a lot of new technology to learn. Of course, not every DBA will have to learn each and every type of technology.
DBAs should be learning NoSQL DBMS technologies, but not with an eye toward replacing relational. Instead, at least for the time-being, NoSQL technologies (Key/Value, column, document store, and graph) are currently very common in big data and advanced analytics projects. My view is that these products will remain niche solutions, but the technology will be widely adopted. How will that happen? Well, relational DBMSs will add functionality to combat the NoSQL offerings, just like they did to combat the Object-Oriented DBMS offerings in the 1990s. So instead of just offering a relational engine, a DBMS (such as Oracle or DB2) will offer additional engines, such as key/value or document stores.
That means that DBAs who spend the time to learn what the NoSQL database technologies do today will be well-prepared for the multi-engine DBMS of the future. Not only will the NoSQL-knowledgeable DBA be able to help implement projects where organizations are using NoSQL databases today, but they will also be ahead of their peers when NoSQL functionality is added to their RDBMS product(s).
DBAs should also learn about Hadoop, MapReduce and Spark. Now Hadoop is not a DBMS, but it is likely to be a long-term mainstay for data management, particularly for managing big data. An education in Hadoop and MapReduce will bolster a DBA’s career and make them more employable long-term.
