It’s the start of a new year, and the first T-SQL Tuesday is from Andy Yun. I’ve known Andy a long time and this is his third time hosting with a creative prompt for us all to consider.

I really like this one as it could be taken as a technical or a non-technical prompt. What did you think was one way and you learned it was another way. Always good to stop and double check that your view is actually representing what you think.

We all do this in our views of life as well as work, and it can be hard to change what or how we think. This is especially true for many of my customers, as I find them wanting to adopt DevOps, but not really wanting to change.

I’ll tackle this one in a couple ways, one technical and one non-technical.

Separate Accounts for Each Instance

For a long time, I always used separate domain accounts for each SQL Server service. Even in a large environment, with hundreds of instances, I did the work (or have junior DBAs do it) to ensure that each service was account separated. This was important because I’ve had change passwords and other issues break services in the past. None of the incidents seemed worth saving a bit of time to set up separate accounts.

Over time, and as SQL Server evolved, Group Managed Service Accounts came into being. I resisted using these at first, but over time I’ve realized that these are valuable and provide security as well as ease of administration. If I went back to managing servers, even single ones, I’d likely look to ensure that gMSA was the standard.

Take Feedback as An Opportunity

I’ve struggled with having someone criticize me for my work. I’ve even struggled when they suggest something else, bristling at the idea that I wasn’t doing something well. Often I was successful and doing something well, but there might be a better way.

Across time, and age, I’ve learned to appreciate other points of view and not become defensive to feedback. Instead, I’ve started to look at other views as a chance to learn or grow, or even just try something. I can still reject the advice or suggestion, but I ought to consider it.

I’ve started to adopt the “strong opinions, loosely held” philosophy at work.

Note, I’m trying to do this in my personal life, but I still very much suck at this.