Kevin Hill predicts that database administration isn’t going anywhere anytime soon:
There have been a lot of questions, posts, answers, guesses and such floating around the SQL blogs lately…most of which seem to suggest that the DBA is going away.
Hogwash.
The DBA position is not going away. Ever. Or at least not before I retire to Utah to spend my days mountain biking 😉
That said, Kevin does point out that you shouldn’t rest on your laurels.
One fun anecdote I have about database administration: I recall some marketing for some NoSQL product about how, by adopting their software, you can get rid of those stodgy database administrators. Within a couple of years, said product’s parent company was offering developer training on “advanced” techniques, which included taking backups, tuning queries, implementing disaster recovery, and creating good indexes to help with performance. But hey, at least they don’t have DBAs!