Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • The Real Scary DBAs

    I ran into someone recently that told me they were scared at their job. This person had built a number of ETL jobs to move data around between systems. They were trained as a developer, but had a little experience, got sucked into working with SQL Server, and had made a career without really considering themselves a DBA. They seemed a bit bewildered that they hadn’t messed up the data in any of their employer’s systems.

    I’ve met quite a few people like that, who seem amazed to be trusted to accomplish the work they do on a regular basis. It’s good that many people can go through a career in SQL Server and successfully accomplish the things their employer needs done. However there’s no shortage of “scary DBAs” out there that are in over their heads and do cause damage to data and systems.

    I see questions at SQLServerCentral on a regular basis that scare me. Not because the question is particularly hard, but because the person asking the question seems to be trusted with way more responsibility than they are capable of handling. I’m glad they’re asking questions, but often the additional questions they ask, or the lack of understanding they display about the answers have me worried. It’s not that these people are stupid, but often they don’t have the experience to do the job they’re assigned.

    All of us have things to learn. Many of us continue to learn on the job, often as we’re getting work done. I think that’s a valid way of going through your technology career and I hope most of you continue to improve your skills on a regular basis. However there are quite a few people that have little aptitude for their chosen field, learn the barest minimum to get by, and often implement code and configurations without understanding what they are doing.

    Those are the really scary DBAs and I’m amazed that so many of them are trusted by their employers to actively manage organizational data.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.2MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music.

  • Advice for Steve Jones

    I was tagged by Mike Walsh in a blog post entitled: 4 Attitudes I Wish I Had Earlier as a DBA. It’s a look back at Mike’s career and a few things that he wishes he’d known earlier in his career. These are four mental ways of viewing the world, soft skills that might have made more successful, or successful faster. Mike asked a few people to share their thoughts, and there are some good ones from Brent Ozar, Erin Stellato, and my favorite Aunt Kathi.

    I’ve got lots of advice for the young Steve Jones. I’ve had a successful career, with few regrets, and I think a small number of decisions I would undo. However I have some advice for myself, based on things I’ve learned, or things I’m still learning.

    There is no Plan
    There is no master business plan, and the people making decisions don’t necessarily make the best decisions. They’re not right, but they are in charge. Argue your position, give your professional opinion, and when the decision is made, support it and make it work.

    Take a breath
    Before you rush into decisions or actions, especially in a crisis, take a breath. It’s better to be a little slower than compound one mistake with another.

    We’re not saving babies
    Most of us don’t work on systems that affect human life. If you do, that’s fine, but for most of us our jobs aren’t that critical. Learn to keep things in perspective, and try to help your boss remember that as well.

    Be your own person
    Be honest with yourself. What do you like, and more importantly, what do you not like. It’s easy to get caught up in what others think. It’s easy to let yourself get drawn into a path that is not your own. Choose your own path, but more importantly, learn where your path really leads.

    I’ve written a bit more, a slightly longer post on my blog with a few more items. However these are the pieces of advice I’d have liked to have learned earlier in my career. Perhaps hearing one of these items will help one of consider yourself a success a bit sooner in career.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music.

     

  • Happy Labor Day 2014

    Happy Labor Day to everyone. It’s a holiday in the US, so a break from labor for many of us, but those of you outside the US are probably hard at work, so I hope you have a very productive, stress-free day.

    Labor Day was conceived as a workingman’s holiday, and should celebrate the efforts of workers at their crafts. It was an attempt to heal relations between railroad workers and companies in the wake of the Pullman Strike, but has also come to mark the end of summer and beginning of school for many in the US, though many educational institutions have already started the new year in August.

    With that in mind, I’d like you to stop and think for a minute about the things you build or work on. Think of something that you are proud of having worked on. I hope that you have a few fond memories of work that has gone well in your career.

    I’ve built lots of software, and there are quite a few systems I’m proud of. I worked to rewrite an inventory application for an import business, a data center management application for one large company, and even a few reports that I thought were very useful and valuable to my employers. I didn’t build most of the software running this site, but I do think that SQLServerCentral as a total entity is the thing I’m most proud of. I’m not sure if my fellow founders, Andy Warren and Brian Knight, feel the same way, but I’m quite pleased that I’ve been able to help many SQL Server professionals get better at their jobs.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music.

  • Hooks

    I read this sentence recently, and it really caught my eye, mostly because I’ve rarely seen hooks being built into the software systems that I’ve written, or that have been deployed to my production systems.

    “A quick chat with your Operations team should convince you of the necessity to log every error condition to a single wellknown location, with the appropriate severity, so that they [the Operations team] know exactly what the problem is.”

    It seems obvious, but so few people I know have taken advantage of this. Far too many software products build their own logs and display errors on screens rather than alerting operations departments. So few people have taken advantage of RAISERROR to write to Windows logs, or the custom SQL Server performance counters to disclose information to operations systems or personnel.

    That’s my experience, but I wanted to ask you this week how you’ve handled things. Do you have software installed that does this? Is it a part of your development process to include hooks?

    Do you hook your logging into operations systems to alert others?

    As I think about it, I can’t imagine not doing this now. After all, I like to sleep. I don’t need calls at 2am from Production operator trying to find a log and debug a problem. I’d rather ensure that I log information to well known places and ensure exceptions will catch the eye of operations people. I want to give them as much information as I can in order to help them solve the problem. I’d rather sleep and depend on the on-call staff then be woken up because they rely on me to solve problems.

    Personally I think that logging to the Event logs, or including configuration switches to send alerts to other software ought to be part of the best practice of developing software. It’s a maturity point where we recognize that we’re building interconnected systems, not individual bits of software that live like hermits.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.6MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn. feed

    The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.