Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Swarms

    First we had agile programming, designed to respond to quickly changing requirements for software development. Now we might have the addition of swarms as a way of getting things done in our jobs.

    One of the predictions that the Gartner Group has for the workplace in the next decade is the introduction of swarms as a more common way for companies to get things done. I think that a swarm is designed to be a rapidly formed, ad hoc group that comes together for a period of time. They are self forming, probably driven by one person that needs help with a problem and  either seeks out colleagues, or perhaps just somehow posts a request for help from people in the company.

    It sounds a lot like an action movie plot where the best soldiers are pulled together for a mission suited to their unique skills. Hopefully it’s more like a Mission Impossible team and not a Mystery Men one, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see more team formed like the one in the latter movie.

    This is really like the crisis team in a company, or a new project team  crossing multiple departments, but organized in a less-formal, and much quicker manner. I do think that more and more we will be called on to do work for people who are not our supervisors as businesses look to be more reactive and responsive to changing requirements.

    I can see us evolving some businesses to having a “guidance counselor” who approves our expense reports, performs periodic reviews, helps us manage our careers, and is available to discuss issues. I think many of us might prefer this to a direct manager that is looking to assign us work. It might be more interesting to go find your own work, or respond to requests from others inside the company.

    Steve Jones

  • T-SQL Tuesday #12 – Why Do You Need a DBA?

    TSQL2sDay150x150 It’s once again time for T-SQL Tuesday, the brainchild of Adam Machanic (Blog|Twitter). It’s a monthly blog party, designed to get bloggers to all write on a single topic on the same day. This month we have the party hosted by Paul Randal with his topic of why are DBA skills necessary?

    I enjoy participating, and if you want to host one of the monthly events, please contact Adam and get on the schedule. It’s not a lot of work, and it will be something that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.

    Is a DBA Needed?

    I’ve wondered about this at a few jobs. I know when I’ve automated checks and maintenance, gotten a solid DR plan running, and tuned most of the queries that I can, life is pretty easy as a DBA. I’ve often had time to try and learn more about SQL Server, be more pro-active with developers, and even spend a few minutes at the water cooler. After 6-12 months at a few jobs, I’ve often felt like I had things in control, and I could have worked 24 hours a week and had a very stable environment. 

    In fact, I tried to convince one boss of that, offering to take a pay cut and maintain his environment in 3 days a week. My boss didn’t go for it, mostly because the company didn’t want any part time people, but I think I could have saved them some money and been fine with the occasional consulting job.

    Not every environment is like that, but so many consultants walk into jobs where the SQL Server isn’t performing well, and the applications are slow. A crashed server can become a major event, and even cost the company significant revenue from systems not being able to handle the load or being down.

    DBAs are Insurance

    At the base level, a DBA provides some insurance for one of a company’s most valuable assets: it’s data. Many DBAs, even those that don’t know how to tune queries or design databases can implement the basics of the job in two areas:

    • backup/restore
    • security

    Without a doubt there are plenty of people that need to improve these skills, but most of them are better than the average system administrator. A DBA that understands these skills can really save money in a company that has any sort of disaster involving a database. I have seen many Windows administrators relying on their tape backup software and an Open file backup driver, or an agent based backup solution, most of which seem to fail when disaster strikes.

    In terms of security, so often a Windows administrator will grant all read/write rights to people accessing SQL Server. Developers can be even worse, granting db_owner privileges, or even using “sa” in their applications. A DBA can ensure that more granular rights are set up, which reduces the risk of any security issues.

    Even an expensive DBA provides some good insurance for a company that can pay off the first time a database needs a restore.

    DBAs are an Investment

    However someone that has strong skills working with SQL Server can be so much more than insurance. They can be an investment that vastly improves the amount of work that your databases systems can do.

    DBAs can tune your systems. They can ensure that SQL Server is set up properly, and that proper indexing is set up. The time savings can be a huge factor in allowing employees to be more productive and produce more revenue. If you develop pieces of your own software, a DBA is a must to ensure that you have well-written code.

    DBAs can find patterns in your data. I think the DBA is critical to ensuring the intelligence aspect of a BI system. The value of that should not be understated. As we capture more and more information about our businesses, it can be easy to start mis-interpreting or mis-understanding the meaning of that data. A good DBA will understand the business and the data, and help the company to understand what information is contained in the data.

    Not always, but often

    Not every company needs a full time DBA. I wouldn’t expect a small business that runs COTS systems with a system administrator to have one. But many companies, and likely every company that develops software based on a database (either in-house or shrinkwrap), should have DBA skills.  Having someone that understands the database, and can guide its use just prevents so many problems in the future.

    You might not need a full-time DBA, but you most likely do need those DBA skills if you have a SQL Server running in your data center.

  • Finding Your Dream Job

    My pre-conference session for the SQL Rally conference in the spring is called “Finding Your Dream Job”. Chris Shaw ( LinkedIn | blog | @sqlshaw)  and I put this together based on a few other presentations that we’ve both given before.

    Whether you vote for us, Kevin Kline, or Joe Webb, go vote. All of the sessions are good, and depending on what’s interesting to you, pick the one you’d like to attend.

    Vote Now

    Why Us?

    It’s a good question. After all, is it worth $59 or $99 for a day to get some ideas on how to work on your career? Chris talked a little about why this might help you in his blog. To add to his points with a few of my own.

    Promoting one’s self is hard: I find so many people that struggle with promoting themselves. I think we’re all fairly humble at heart, and that’s great.

    Except when you’re looking for a better job. Then you need to stand out and we’ll give you ways to do that.

    Learn the tools: So many people don’t know how to use the tools available to them. Or they might not even know of tools. We’ll talk about, and give you some good cheat sheets, the tools that you can use and how to use them.

    Tips and Tricks: How do you network with people? What’s a good way to blog to show off your knowledge? How do you handle the interview when you’re stumped? We’ll give you these answers and more. Ultimately it’s up to you to close the deal, but we’ll help you be prepared so that you look your best when you’re in front of people.

    It’s a competitive world. Stand out in it and we’ll help you learn how to do this.

  • My Bucket List

    I actually built on in 1999 and called it a Life List. Over the years I’ve tried to work on the list each year, knocking off something, but I also learned something. I learned that as I grew, and my life was more enjoyable, some of the things on my list no longer matter. I haven’t removed them because I spent some time on it and maybe they’ll come back later, but right now I’m pretty happy with my life.

    However I saw Brent Ozar’s list recently, and a few more (Aaron Bertrand, Jason Brimhall), so I decided to update mine with a short list for my career.

    In no particular order:

    Write a business book – It could be on business in general, professional development, or something else.

    Write a piece of software – I’ve done some development work, and written some utilities, but I’d like to write something that is useful to others, probably something on the web. SQL Saturday is my template, but I’d like to do something similar, but in a different area.

    Work for a non-profit – borrowed from my other list. Habitat for Humanity is at the top of my list, but maybe a local food bank will get me for a significant amount of time at some point.

    Mentor someone, explicitly – I’ve done some of this without meaning to, and people have recognized it. I’d like to ask someone if I can, or have them ask me and have it reach some type of completion status.

    Drive a Race Car – I’m fairly conservative and careful, and actually am tempted to pull my “skydiving” off my other list. But reading Brent’s list made me think about getting on a racetrack for a day or two. I actually investigated this a few years ago.

    Drive around the country and see all 50 states – I’ve driven across the US, multiple times in fact. However I’d like to get an RV and just cruise at some point. Likely it would be a 5th wheel living quarters trailer so my wife can bring her horses, but that would be great.

    There’s likely more, and I know that my old list could use a re-vamping, but this will do for now.