etc.), cited by 69%. However, there are also a range of new responsibilities, which take database administration to a new level. More than two in five cite change management and security as important roles.
Figure 2: Top DBA Responsibilities
Maintenance (backups, alerts, integrity checks, defragmentation, etc.)...70%
Performance (system and data availability, diagnostics, optimizing and tuning, etc.)...69%
Configuration (adding features, patching, upgrading, etc.)...56%
Change management (deploying schema changes, etc.)...44%
Security (auditing, configuring, documenting, etc.)...41%
Capacity planning (forecasting future workloads and system capacity needs, ?identifying new technologies, etc.)...33%
Data integration (ETL, moving data, merging data, etc.)...33%
Supporting development efforts (creating test and development databases ?and synchronizing them with production, etc.)...33%
Database development (data modeling, programming, deploying code to production, etc.)...30%
Automation is a key strategy for freeing up DBAs from the more mundane or routine tasks that tie up their time. Verification that all is working as intended is the first and foremost area of automation. The most common implementations include automating the verification of instances being up, monitoring disk space, and verifying the success of database backups.
Figure 3: Automated DBA Tasks
Verify all instances are up...81%
Monitor disk space...72%
Verify success of database backups...71%
Verify that all scheduled jobs have run successfully...71%
Inspect error logs for unusual events...46%
Verify that replicated databases are synchronized...43%
Review database size and growth settings...41%
Cloning or provision databases for test and development...24%
Performance tuning for database workload (rewriting SQL statements, adding indexes, etc.)...15%
Tasks that are still highly manual include performance tuning for database workloads—rewriting SQL statements, adding indexes, and cloning or provisioning databases for test and development purposes.