What does a database administrator do? How is a database administrator's job different from a systems analyst's job or a database manager's job? A good place to start looking for answers to these career questions is the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook section on the Computer Scientists and Systems Analysts site, stats.bls.gov/oco/
ocos042.htm. You can find more information about database-oriented careers by visiting the Boston Computer Museum's Careers in Computing site, www.tcm.org/html/resources/cmp-careers/cnc-data.html. Using a Web search engine and the search phrase "database administrator," you'll find articles such as "DB Dandies" from the April 1997 issue of ComputerWorld. This article gives you an idea of which database skills are the most highly valued and some of the qualities that managers look for in job candidates (www2.computerworld.com/
home/print9497.nsf/All/SLcar0421a). When considering any career, it is worthwhile to consider what your starting salary will be and what salary increases will be like over the course of your career path. DataMaster's 1999 Computer Industry Salary Survey at www.datamasters.com/dm/survey.html provides a list of IS/IT positions with salary information (median low, region median, median high) organized by region of the country. The article "Are Your Pay Scales Right?" at www.datamation.com/staff/07mba.html discusses the idea of establishing pay scales based on benchmark information. This article includes a list of IT jobs with brief descriptions, including database manager, and includes links to Datamation's very extensive salary survey. From Computerworld's 11th Annual Salary Survey at www2.computerworld.com/
home/online9697.nsf/All/970901survey, you can get an idea of the kind of salary increases you can expect from a database-related career.