At IBM Corp.’s Information on Demand conference earlier this week, I had a conversation about the future of databases with Anant Jhingran, the company’s vice-president and chief technology officer for information management.
During that conversation, Jhingran likened databases to mainframes in that their demise is often discussed yet they’re both still around. Jhingran said developers have continued to build atop databases rather than outright replacing them, illustrating how robust they are, or as he put it, “such solid workhorses”.
For instance, he said, IBM is evolving their database technology with industry innovations in mind, like new hardware platforms, storage devices, and Web 2.0. With these changes, the definition of a database might change, albeit that’s often subjective, said Jhingran. “Is it a database or a combination of two technologies with a wrapper around it with a common user interface?” he said.
“But while databases are evolving, what of the database administrator’s role?” I asked. He responded that while there are fewer database issues to contend with nowadays, database administrators have to manage new technologies that interact with databases, like mashups for instance.
Different versions of mashups are used by many small user groups across an organization to retrieve data sitting in databases in the specific manner the users want. Database administrators, said Jhingran, have the responsibility of ensuring users get what they want via these mashups.
So it sounds to me, that in order to keep up with the innovating landscape, database administrators have to morph their role much like the systems they work on. While the degree to which applications are built around the database is a good measure of its robustness, the same can be said for database administrators’ ability to recognize new technologies and blend them into their job.