Datasheet

Business Intelligence DBA
The Business Intelligence (BI) DBA is a new role that has grown due to the increased surface area of SQL
Server. In SQL Server 2005, BI has grown to be an incredibly important feature set that many businesses
cannot live without. The BI DBA is an expert at these features. He or she is the one who creates your SSIS
packages to perform Extract Transform and Load (ETL) processes or reports for users. In many organiza-
tions, the role is so large that the BI DBA functions may be broken into smaller subsets, and you may
have specialized DBAs to perform tasks such as SSIS or reports. In the world of SQL Server, a BI DBA is
responsible for the following types of functions:
❑ Develop data-migration packages
❑ Model Analysis Services cubes and solutions
❑ Work with the analyst to develop KPI measures for Business Scorecard Manager
❑ Create reports using Reporting Services
❑ Develop a Notification Services solution
❑ Create ETL using Integration Services
❑ Develop deployment packages that will be sent to the Production DBA
Organizationally, the BI DBA most often reports to the development group. In some cases with Analysis
Services experts, you may see them report to the analyst group or the project management office. In some
small organizations, the BI DBA may report directly to an executive such as a CFO.
Hybrid DBA
The most exciting role for a DBA is a hybrid of all the roles we just mentioned. This Hybrid DBA is very
typical with smaller organizations but is becoming popular with larger organizations as well. An organi-
zation with high turnover may want to spread their investment over many Hybrid DBAs instead of spe-
cialized roles.
Organizationally, you may see these DBAs reporting directly to the product organization or to a special-
ized DBA group. No matter where these DBAs report, each typically has a slate of products that he or
she supports and performs every DBA function for that product. Such DBAs should also have adequate
backup personnel to reduce the organization’s risk if the Hybrid DBA leaves the company. Also, this
DBA should never install his or her own changes into production. Ideally, for regulatory reasons and for
stability, the DBA’s backup DBA should install the change into production. That way, you can ensure
that the DBA who installed the script didn’t make ad-hoc changes in order to make the change work. We
cover much more about this change-management process in Chapter 10.
The only role of a Hybrid DBA that’s questionable is development of stored procedures. In most organi-
zations where we see this role, the Hybrid DBA does not develop stored procedures. Instead, he or she
creates difficult stored procedures or tunes the ones causing issues. The developer working on the appli-
cation develops his or her own stored procedures and then provides them to the Hybrid DBA to package
and proof. The main reason for this is that the DBA is too taxed for time, working on other functions of
the database.
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SQL Server 2005 Architecture
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