An interview with K. Ramaswamy, Consultant, CG Maersk InfoTech, Chennai.

Apart from the academic qualifications, what are the personality traits necessary to excel in this industry?

A person needs excellent communication skills, analytical ability, a good personality and has to be a team player. Now-a- days companies are following the maxim, 'Hire for attitude and train for skills'. They feel that the required skill sets can always be imparted through training. You have to possess the right attitude towards work and learning.

What is the role of a database administrator?

In the software development sector, a Senior Programmer or Project Leader plays the role of a DBA and in the case of large projects an individual is assigned to perform the DBA functions and will report to the Project Leader/Manager. Here the person is expected to have a thorough knowledge of the whole set up so as to optimize the performance of the system. In a typical EDP set up a DBA does performance monitoring, making regular backups, handles sensitive and confidential data, and data transfer between locations.

If a DBA is working for a very large organization, he needs to be conversant with Dataware housing tools also.

How many years of experience do you require to get into a good company in this area?

In India, reputed companies prefer professionals with at least 4- 5 years of experience. Since one is competent enough to identify and apply various approaches to the practical problems arising in diverse business applications, only after this period. It also depends upon the qualification of the individual, for instance an MBA-Systems can make it in a considerably shorter period.

In the US, professionals with more than 7 years of experience are preferred because he will be the only person handling the overall database management.

Are overseas job opportunities available in this field?

Everybody wants to go abroad in this field and in the US it is a very highly paid job. However, you cannot become a database administrator overnight, you have to possess an in-depth knowledge of the whole set up. I have come across professionals who after years of experience in India go to work in the US where they are paid up to $ 100 an hour in a Multi National company.

I have also come across people who train only in specific DBA areas without any prior programming exposure or technical expertise and go abroad for jobs. This is very risky because the person has no other field of expertise to fall back on in case he doesn't get a job. I have noticed this happening many a time. People in a hurry to make good money do not bother to learn the complete technology and finally find themselves in a fix when job opportunities dry up, the technology changes and even lose their jobs due to lack of technical expertise.

Since DBA is a highly technical field are there chances of monotony setting in?

Yes. There is definitely a possibility of monotony setting in if a person is just going to limit himself to DBA activities. There are different platforms like Microsoft based SQl-Server or Unix Based Sybase/Oracle, so one can switch platforms. This again depends on whether the person wants to be just a DBA or become a Project leader/Manager/ Business Analyst too.

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