1.3 Database Skills for Knowledge-Based Careers

It should be evident from the previous examples that an understanding and knowledge of how to use, design, and build databases is essential for anyone desiring a career in information systems. The core of every type of information system is a database.

Every type of technical position requires extensive or substantial database skills. The database skills required range from being able to design and build a database to being able to monitor, tune, and optimize the database performance. However, database skills are not only required by technical people. Every type of knowledge-based career also requires substantial database knowledge and skill.

Table 1.1 identifies a few other types of knowledge-based careers. A knowledge-based career is one that requires an understanding of how to solve problems using knowledge and analytical skills. A very large percentage of knowledge-based skills now require computer proficiency, along with the ability to understand and use databases to find and extract information. As can be seen from the table, knowledge workers must be able to understand the structure of the data in the database so that they can extract information from the raw data.

Table 1.1

Database Skills Required for Knowledge-based Careers

Job Title	Job Description	DB Knowledge Required	Skill Level Required
Financial Planner	Analyze the security market and recommend financial portfolios	Understand the financial information available in databases. Know how to extract information in various combinations	Moderate
Advertising Manager	Manage advertising campaigns and budgets	Understand sales and performance data. Be able to extract information in various ways.	Moderate
Human Resource Manager	Manage all the hiring, evaluating, and monitoring of the workforce.	Understand information about employees as well as all financial information.	Moderate
Sales Manager	Manage the salespeople and sales activities of an organization	Understand sales data and be able to extract information in various forms. Evaluate performance.	Moderate
Market Research Analyst	Analyze sales and economic data to predict future trends	Understand economic databases. Be able to use databases in novel ways to discover and extract information.	Substantial
Political Scientist	Understand and research demographic data and trends	Be able to analyze data and draw conclusions from demographic databases and questionnaire data.	Substantial
Management Consultant	Analyze organizational issues and recommend solutions	Understand the financial and operational data of an organization as found in various databases	Substantial
Accountant	Support all the accounting requirements of an organization	Understand all financial databases. Identify problems or potentially fraudulent activity through database analysis	Extensive
Economist	Analyze and predict economic trends based on historical data	Understand economic databases, their structure, and data. Be able to extract information in various forms using novel approaches.	Extensive
Sociologist	Analyze social trends and social problems in communities and nations	Understand demographic and social data from diverse and disparate databases. Be able to extract information using multiple techniques	Extensive
Public Administrator	Manage a public government unit	Be able to understand data and information provided in various and diverse databases from the governmental database.	Extensive

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