It seems to me that over the last year or so that there has been an explosion in the use of the term “Accidental DBA” in the SQL Server community.  A google Bing search for “Accidental DBA” returns over 7 million results including blog posts, articles, editorials, and video training.  Since I’ve only been a SQL Server DBA and involved in the SQL Server community I don’t know if there is a similar term with other RDBMS products like Oracle or DB2, but I can say that I “accidentally” became a SQL Server DBA, it wasn’t the career I planned on in college, nor once I entered the Information Technology field.  The interesting thing is that many of the people I respect in the SQL Server community did not originally become SQL Server DBA’s by choice.  Andy Leonard (@AndyLeonard) says he became a SQL Server DBA because “I was the closest one to the SQL Server when the DBA left”.

So how did I end up a SQL Server DBA?  Well, it’s a long story that I’ll try to make short.  I started out by getting a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education and then I learned that working with children was probably not a strength.  I struggled for awhile and thought I’d like to get into IT, and I thought I’d enjoy network and system administration, but, through a good friend I got a job as a software developer working with Access, Visual Basic, SQL Server, Sybase, and DB2 400.  As I worked with each of the technologies I found that I had an aptitude for SQL Server and here I am 10 years later, looking for ways to share the things I’ve learned and finding that the more I know, the more I need to learn.

So how did you become involved with SQL Server?