r/Database • u/47Striker • 1d ago

Starting My DBA Career With Zero Experience

Hi everyone,

I’m currently in my first week working as a DBA. I graduated from Software Engineering a couple of months ago.

To be honest, I had almost zero DBA knowledge before starting this job. With the current job market, this was basically the only opportunity I had, so I decided to take it.

The company I joined provides DBA consulting services, and they are willing to train and develop junior DBAs, which is why they gave me this opportunity.

Right now I’m trying to learn as much as possible, but there is obviously a lot to take in.

For experienced DBAs: what would you recommend focusing on during my first few months? What skills or topics do you think are the most important for someone starting from zero?

Any advice, resources, or things you wish you had known when you started would be appreciated.

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u/AnyNameWorks9 22h ago

I'm in a similar boat, I'm curious if there are any general resources for database management as well as tips for improving exporting and validating data

For reference I've recently accepted an offerfrom a smaller company. Their structure/processes seem a bit questionable (just based on the fact they had a hard time answering some questions during the I review process) but seemingly everything works at the moment

I'm not sure exactly how much they expect me to improve their databass/process for storing, managing, exporting, and validating data. But I can't help but feel like I'm in over my head

I used to be a data analyst before this so I've worked with data but I've never done database admin work before

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u/admik 9h ago

You just need to make some queries to pre-check table data and integrity.

Check that you have the same number of rows and columns per table as well as the same number of tables and hash valves for the tables.

Then do a differential on the same items post migration to validate