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The DBA job market is tight all over the country.  Everybody’s having a hard time finding good database administrators at the price they’re allowed to pay.  (I can personally vouch for this because I get a handful of recruiter calls every day asking me to relocate to every state in the country.)

At the same time, the role of the DBA keeps expanding.  We’re being asked to manage more servers – not just database servers, but related applications like Sharepoint.  (The data goes in SQL, right?  Give it to the DBA, she’ll manage it.)

Compounding the problem is that DBA training is just as hard to find as a good DBA, so it’s hard to take a junior DBA or a developer and simply send them to training to become a full-fledged DBA.  The attendees lamented the lack of quality DBA classes – boot camps taught by non-DBAs just don’t cut it.  The attendees asked Quest to make it easier to take junior DBAs, put them in more challenging roles, and equip them with tools and knowledge to get the job done faster.

Even good DBAs don’t have the luxury of doing constant performance tuning on a wide array of servers and applications, finding out what methods work best, and staying on top of changes in the engine itself.  That is a full time job, and it’s even tougher to find people who are good at that.

So how does a software company help?

Quest is partnering with Solid Quality Mentors to build more know-how into Quest products and offer more services.  SolidQ is a well-known and well-respected group of seriously smart SQL gurus, especially in the field of performance tuning.

What this means for DBAs is that Quest’s SQL Server tools will start including features specific to SolidQ’s tuning and monitoring advice.  Quest isn’t just slapping a SolidQ label on the software: SolidQ is giving valuable feedback about new features, new counters to monitor, and how to interpret those counters.

Why should you care?  Because this is another example of how Quest is out to make you, the DBA, look a rock star.  They’re not just monitoring a bunch of outdated statistics and saying it’s good enough – they’re bundling high-end SQL Server knowledge straight into the tools.

For more info about how the partnership came about, check out this Quest-SolidQ podcast with Douglas Chrystall, Heather Eichman and Brian Moran.

(Disclaimer: this is my personal opinion, not vetted by anybody at Quest.  Your mileage may vary.  Purchase not necessary to win.  It’s log, it’s log, it’s better than bad – it’s good.)