Again, why are they worried about what's going on at the server? SQL codes are SQL codes... Oracle is Oracle, etc. What you're talking about is normally handled by desktop apps, such as the Accounting app, or add-ons made from Crystal Reports, or Access, etc.
Again? What again? I told you, “manipulate data files, manage processes, synchronize or backup data and interact with the OS”. The world is bigger than your experience.
One experience I had was training a couple of administrators on a distributed system that included an SCO box running a Centenium predictive dialer for a bank of collection agents. We were combining collections for hospital and physician, something never before done, at Stanford. Backup and occasional processes needed to be run on the server by the lead collection agent turned business analyst for the new system. It was very political so they agreed to hire her for that spot.
She needed to understand many things like how to identify the latest daily physician and hospital billing data files on SMS and Informix, FTP them from mainframes over to her PC and to troubleshoot problems in them. She would process them into a single “merged” call file, FTP it over and process that in the Centenium system. Occasionally she needed to traverse across the SCO file system to trouble shoot there. She failed, and then she sued, having something to do with her race.
Another girl with a little more technical experience came in and did a great job, but it took time to get her comfortable with the command line on a new OS in addition to all else.
If you grew up on all that, or if you’re used to mature systems built to isolate all that from the user, you might not relate.