markbaa - 3:06 am on Sep 19, 2005 (gmt 0)

I agree with podman. Having said that, most websites are probably ok with having a fairly basic database. I'm a programmer with database experience, but as soon as the database hits about 5 tables, I know I'm getting out of my depth and will try and get a database expert in.

The other thing I'll add is make sure you get someone with some business savvy. I've worked with people who are database gurus, but unfortunately, can't see the forest for the trees. They may in fact end up engineering for all sorts of exceptions which in reality are unlikely to ever happen. Do you REALLY want to pay $1000 for a clever technical solution that's only going to happen realistically once a year if that, and could be replaced with an error message and perhaps a prompt to contact support? I've spent a lot of my career managing such people (having enough database knowledge to call out problems), and know that both under engineering and over engineering are both very common.