It’s been said that the database administrator (DBA) has three basic tasks. In decreasing order of importance, they are: protect the data, protect the data, and protect the data.
Although data integrity is clearly the #1 job (who cares if the database is available or fast if the data isn’t good), the DBA has many other jobs as well. Here’s a list of the actual tasks that a DBA performs. (Some duties are common to all DBAs, and others are only required in some database environments.)
