This rapid uptake of new RDBMS versions causes much difficulty for locating new DBA candidates, because most technology employers desire new hires to have years of practice with the tools they are being recruited to use.  John Smith, a hiring manager for Natural Utility Tools commented, “For most technologies, we look for 3-5 years of experience in a technology before we will make use of it. Just now in 2011 we are getting people ready to make good use of C# and Visual Studio 2008. But DBAs rarely have any production experience in a SQL Server version before they have used it in production and are pushing to start working on the next beta or alpha edition.  It really drives the other developers crazy”

To be a really great DBA requires not only an adventurous nature with database technologies, but technologies of all sorts. Whereas most people wait for months or years to adopt a Mobile Phone technology (2), and keep that technology until they are required to upgrade, DBAs regularly change phones at least yearly if not more frequently, making sure to have the most up to date electronic communication devices. 

Most DBAs spend a lot of their time enthusiastically and uncritically learning all sorts of technologies such as  LINQ and XML in order to understand the world of the developers they deal with regularly.  Most DBAs understand networking, hardware, and learn at least one procedural/object oriented language (and many are fluent at several.)

Finally, one of the key ingredients in being a successful DBA is keeping up with trends in the business. As new database technologies come out, like Object Oriented-Relational, Entity-Attribute-Value and recently NoSQL, most DBAs find that it is important to learn everything they can about these in case they might be a suitable replacement for the relational model that has served them well for 25 years: DBAs are constantly on the cutting edge out there searching for the next best thing, and it could be 10 days from now, or 10 more years, but for the successful DBA, it is all part of the adventure.

1.       Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe Technology Studies, 2005

2.       Steve Bow and Frank Guss Statistics, 2008