Working in this area.
WHAT THE ROLE COVERS
- Operations: availability, backups, upgrades
- Performance: indexing, query tuning, capacity
- Development support: schema design, review
- Security: access, auditing, compliance
WHAT SKILLS MATTER MOST
Reading execution plans Understanding indexes deeply Diagnosing methodically Knowing what a restore actually involves
WHAT TRANSFERS BETWEEN DATABASES
Concepts: indexing, transactions, locking, recovery.
WHAT DOES NOT
Syntax, tooling and configuration.
WHAT TO LEARN FIRST
One relational database, thoroughly.
WHY THOROUGHLY
Shallow knowledge of four is worth less than depth in one.
WHAT TO PRACTISE
Restoring backups Deliberately creating slow queries and fixing them Setting up replication and breaking it
WHY BREAKING THINGS
Recovery is the skill, and it cannot be learned from documentation alone.
WHAT DEMONSTRATES CAPABILITY
A documented case of diagnosing and fixing something specific.
WHAT EMPLOYERS ASK ABOUT
How you would find a slow query How you would recover from a dropped table How replication works
WHAT DISTINGUISHES EXPERIENCE
Caution, and knowing what cannot be undone.
WHAT TO AVOID
Confidence about production systems you have not measured.
