Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • The Top Ten Skills You Need

    One of the things I’ve found is that so many people struggle to get started with SQL Server. There are regular questions about how to learn to work with SQL Server, so I built this quick talk that should help you get started.

    This talk is built on the 80/20 rule, the idea that 80% of your job needs 20% of the DBA skills, and vice versa. So these are a series of skills, presented quickly, that should get you through most of the things that you need to deal with in SQL Server as an administrator.

    Developers will find that spending a little time learning these skills will also let them easily setup a SQL Server instance that can maintain itself for the most part without them. And it will protect them in the event there are issues.

    The talk moves quickly, but there are lots of links and references in the deck.

    Slides

    The slides are on my SkyDrive.

    Length

    This talk is built for 60-75 minutes

    Related Blogs

    These are the blog posts related to this talk:

  • The difference between REVOKE and DENY

    There was confusion recently with a poster that was moving permissions around and asked why I said they should revoke permissions and not deny them. I decided this was worth a post to explain.

    If I GRANT SELECT (or UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE) permissions to a user, then they can use those permissions to view data in a table. If I REVOKE the permissions, it’s the same as if the user never had them. They would need to be GRANTed permissions again to see the data.

    However, if I DENY them the ability to see data, then that’s different. They can’t see the data, but a subsequent GRANT will not allow them to see the data because the DENY will still be in effect.

    It’s a more permanent change, and should be used when you need to be sure that someone cannot see data, not when you are looking to remove permissions. To undo a GRANT, use REVOKE.

  • Why I’m raising my son to be a nerd

    A good read, from ESPN and CNN columnist, LZ Granderson: Why I’m raising my son to be a nerd.

    We need more STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education in this country, and probably in all countries.

  • New Connect Item – TDE

    Does the certificate matter for TDE? Apparently not as I found a number of people discussing the fact that the expiration date for certificates is not checked for TDE restores. So if your certificate expires, you can still restore the TDE backup.

    However the documentation doesn’t mention this, and I think it ought to be clarified, so I submitted this Connect item. Feel free to vote if you agree:

    https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/677365/doc-clarify-the-expiration-date-field-of-certificates-impact-on-tde

    Whether the expiration date should matter is another debate. I think it should, but I need to really think about the pros and cons of this.