Career Focus: Why One DBA Love His Job

Working in MVS operations for a carpet producer in the early 1990s, Randy Wilson found himself on the third shift, with only four or five real hours of work each night. Some might have found the empty hours hard to fill. But Wilson used them as an opportunity — to read technical manuals.

He studied JCL. He studied VSAM, VTAM, and various facets of MVS internals. He started working more closely with systems programmers. Ultimately, he made the leap from operations into systems programming and then to mainframe database administration.

Of course, he didn't stop there. Today, Wilson is lead DBA for DB2 UDB for AIX at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which provides healthcare coverage for approximately nine million members and employs 4,300 people. Wilson, based in the company's Chattanooga headquarters, oversees 90 DB2 UDB for AIX databases supporting many applications and is responsible for database implementations designed to provide repositories for everything from transactional systems, to data marts, to data warehouses.

What happened to his mainframe career path? The switch from the mainframe environment to the less-structured world of Unix was just the next opportunity for a man who says he's always looking to learn something new. In 1999, Wilson worked on a project to move data out of a CA/Datacom database into DB2. Once this project ended, he took the opportunity to build BlueCross's DB2 UDB for AIX environment from the ground up.

"The learning curve wasn't as bad as it could have been, because I'd always worked with PC-DOS and command-line environments," Wilson said, "But it was still a challenge to move from a very structured, menu-driven mainframe atmosphere into Unix."

Not that he minded, of course. "I like tweaking things. And [DB2 UDB for AIX] really lets you take control of how your systems perform."

Naturally, he put in the extra effort to acquire the advanced IBM DB2 DBA certifications, a step Wilson says has helped him on the job. And, although he lists that mainframe-to-Unix switch as one of the biggest work challenges he's faced, building the DB2 for AIX environment is one of his proudest achievements.

Several years and many versions later (he started the AIX environment with version 6.1), Wilson is already eyeing his next learning opportunities. He's already using version 8's multidimensional clustering with good results and is looking forward to range partitioning capabilities in the upcoming DB2 "Viper." And he's beginning to tackle data federation projects within the DB2 family.

Here Wilson shares his insights about what makes a job worth having.

What makes your job a dream job? The best thing about my job is the diversity. I've worked with everything from the DB2 client, to DB2 UDB for Linux, Unix, and Windows, DB2 Connect, and DB2 z/OS. The applications I support and design challenges we face keep the job interesting.

Biggest job perk: All the overtime I want.

Advice to anyone considering a DB2 career: Once you get your foot in the door, don't become complacent — keep on building your own knowledge base. It's not how smart you are, it's how well you use the resources around you. A DBA's job can really be fun, and as IT environments evolve, you're always given opportunities to find better ways to get things done.