Welcome to DBA: From Accidental to Pro, and thank you for being here.
Most of us didn't plan to become DBAs. One day the database was ours, and we learned the rest in production. That's where the name of this newsletter comes from. It's also my own story.
I'm not a DBA by job title anymore, but I still work with database professionals every week, and much of what I do still comes back to the database. So for this first post, I'll tell you how I became a DBA by accident.
A developer, not a DBA
The year is 2002. I was working at Stefanini, a large technology consultancy in Brazil, in its software factory. I started there as a developer, building applications in Visual Basic 6 on top of Oracle databases.
After a while, I became a development lead. Depending on the season, I coordinated six to eight developers. I was responsible for what we delivered: internal systems, and systems for clients, some of them large.
People with that mix of skills were hard to find back then. It was common for me to get four or five job offers in a month, sometimes more.
The scare
In early 2002, Stefanini and other companies in the market started to reorganize. It was nothing like the layoffs we see in tech today. There were far fewer. But because they were rare, they scared me.
I wasn't an employee. I was a contractor. If my contract ended, I didn't want to be left without an easy option, even with all those offers coming in.
One exam
So I decided to take a Microsoft exam on SQL Server.
I wasn't starting from zero. Back in 1998, I had taken a Microsoft Official Curriculum course on database design with SQL Server 6.5, and some of the systems we built ran on SQL Server. But I knew it from the developer's side, not from the side of the person who keeps it running.
The exam was 70-229, Designing and Implementing Databases with Microsoft SQL Server 2000. I took it on June 10, 2002 and, to my happy surprise, I passed: 727 points, with 704 needed to pass. It was my first Microsoft exam, 24 years ago now, and I still have the score report.
Then something I didn't expect happened. Inside Stefanini, I started getting DBA work. I had just been certified and had little hands-on experience, but I was assigned to client projects as a database consultant: health checks, configuration reviews, recommendations. The usual DBA work, seen from a consultant's chair.
I wasn't a production DBA yet. That came years later. But the door was open.
The other reason: .NET
There was a second reason I moved to databases for good, and I'll be honest about it.
In 2002, Microsoft launched .NET and Visual Studio .NET. When I saw the first presentations, mostly C#, I got scared. Not because I didn't like it. I thought I wouldn't be able to learn it fast enough to stay useful in the market.
Some people will read this and think: really? Yes, really. I looked at it, and something told me, "I won't make it."
Would I have made it? I don't know. Maybe I should have stayed a developer, and my career would have gone somewhere else. Some people might say I chose the easy path. Maybe. But databases have plenty of hard problems of their own, as every DBA reading this knows.
What I'd tell my 2002 self
Fear can be a good reason to move, as long as you move toward something. I was scared of losing my contract and of a new language. Instead of freezing, I studied.
A certification opens the door. Practice keeps you in the room. The exam got me my first DBA tasks. Doing them is what kept me there.
An accidental start is still a start. If the database landed on you by surprise, you're in good company. This newsletter is for you.
Coming next
A few months after that exam, before the end of 2002, a Microsoft partner contacted me about a job as a database professional. One of the reasons was the certification. Only later did I find out the work was as a vendor for Microsoft Brazil itself.
That's a longer story, with a funny part that only a few close friends know. I'll tell it in the next post.
What you'll get here
A new post every Monday, and a short, practical tip every Thursday, on SQL Server and PostgreSQL: internals, performance, high availability and DR, backup and recovery, and security.
Every post is free to read through December 2027. No paywall, nothing to unlock.
And if you have your own story about how you became a DBA, by accident or by plan, hit reply. I read every message.
See you next Monday,
Alex
How I write: every post starts from my own notes and experience. I use AI tools to help draft and edit, and I review every word before it goes out.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Microsoft. The author is a Microsoft employee.
