Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • No Shrink-y Tempdb

    I caught the end of a Twitter conversation the other day between Wes Brown (Blog | @WesBrownSQL), Paul Randal (blog | @PaulRandal), and Aaron Bertrand (blog | @aaronbertrand) talking about shrinking tempdb and the potential issues.

    I’ve never thought about it before, but someone investigated and the question popped up on Twitter. Nioholas Cain (blog | @SirSQL) wrote a nice blog post on the events, and it explains how he came to the question (a full disk).

    The short answer is that you can cause corruption in tempdb if there is activity taking place when you shrink.

    So don’t shrink tempdb!

    At least not without quiescing SQL Server. If you don’t know what that means, don’t shrink tempdb on your active server. In case you don’t know, it means allowing active connections to drain off and not allowing new ones. There’s a KB article on this.

  • The Exceptional DBA for 2011

    Once again we’re running a contest to find the Exceptional DBA around the globe. I’ve been a judge the last three years, and it’s been a hard choice trying to pick from some great applications. This year the judges are Brad McGehee, Brent Ozar, Rodney Landrum and me.

    Nominations are now open, and you can nominate yourself, or a colleague for the change to be named the Exceptional DBA of 2011.

    Best of luck to everyone, and a few hints.

    • More writing is better – We don’t want to read a chapter from War and Peace, but take a few paragraphs to describe your environment with some details.
    • Be specific on the highlights. – Let us know what you did, why it’s important or impressive to your organization.
    • Be well rounded – We are looking for people that do more than their job. They teach others, they are proactive, and they make the DBA profession better for everyone.
    • Proofread – Have a friend or even your boss review the nomination form.

    The nominations are open until June 30, so take a week or so and think about how best to present yourself.

  • Treat People Like People

    The Millenials have different priorities

    Millennials, the next generation of college graduates are coming out of school and looking for work. These are people who have grown up with technology all of their lives, and probably can’t imagine living without a computer, much less Internet access. The world is a much different place to these people that it was to the Gen X or Baby Boomers before them.

    And hiring them takes a new tactic. Reading this article about the way to hire new graduates makes me think of one simple thing: treat people like people, not resources. This is a generation of people that have seen many alternatives to corporate cubicles, and have a different approach towards work. The flexibility and soft perks of a job are often more important than money, which is interesting to me given all the stories about Internet millionaires in the time of The Social Network.

    I’ve never liked being referred to as a resource, as some interchangeable chess piece whose performance is easily replaceable by another employer. As much as HR departments have tried to incorporate more tolerance and sensitivity into our workplace, the very way people are described tends to dehumanize them.

    I’m not a Millennial, but perhaps I was born a couple decades too soon because many of the things they find important in a job, the autonomy and purpose (talked about in Drive) being more important than compensations, are values I have. We should work, and we should try to give our employer’s a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. We should also be treated fairly, as fellow human beings and neighbors, not resources.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

  • Fun with Light Bulbs

    I needed an image of a “great idea”, and decided to use a light bulb. I started looking through Flickr and then realized I could just as easily do my own picture. So I enlisted Kendall for this series of shots.

    fun1fun2fun3fun4fun5fun6fun7

     

    We had fun, with Kendall holding some of them and laughing the whole time. It was a fun silly few minutes in our day.

    I ended up using this one in my editorial:

    idea