Real world experience is the DBA king

Following on from 3 ways to identify an expert , I got into a conversation with a colleague and we discussed whether it is possible to be an “expert” but without real world experience.  My argument is that real world experience is the  real  definition of an expert

What is the right amount of real- world experience that makes you a database expert?  It depends on the type of experience, but I would say a DBA with 10 – 15 years full time exposure, can legitimately start to be classed  an expert.

The key is on the type of experience :  a) Real-world means you have been involved with complicated database problems in Production environments. Absolutely nothing can replace this sort of experience

b)Quality versus Quantity experience. Quantity is a given when it comes to a full time DBA , but quality is essential. In a multi application , modern environment – patching , outages, IO issues, data growth, corruption – and that’s just one day. You get the idea!

c)Wide range experience– Basic tasks, backup \ restores, high availability , security , data modelling,OLTP, Datawarehouses – look into everything

It’s the combination of the above three components which leads to real expertise

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