[thelist] Must a webmaster know databases???

[Herzog, Ari]

Hi all...

How important is it for a webmaster to know database design and programming?
My boss - at a traditional 50+ year-old company - is under the impression
that
because I am the webmaster, that by the same token, I should be able to know
Access programming
and/or ColdFusion programming, rather than asking a database guru in our
I.S. department
to handle it, or to go to an outside consultant.

I responded and told him that I cannot know everything, and that with the
complexity
of the web, it is normal for people to have specialties. Why should I spend
hours looking
up something if it takes an expert 5 seconds? Is that not the ultimate goal?

For instance...in November 1999, I took an Advanced ColdFusion Development
course
at Allaire, and since that time, I have used CF only for form creation and
processing.
But new forms are merely duplicates of other forms with other enhancements
in 
JavaScript, HTML, etc. Not really new CF programming. Yet, my boss assumes
I should know advanced functions even though as I told him, if I don't use
it,
I will forget it.

Aside from myself as webmaster, I have two coworkers who are
web developers/designers. Take something like map creation;
I wanted to use something like MapQuest, but my boss would prefer we do it
by hand
and thereby spend time doing something that could have been already done.

Who's right here? What goes on where you work?

Thx,
Ari