Voice of the DBA

Tag: T-SQL Tuesday

  • T-SQL Tuesday #28 – Jack of all Trades, Master of None

    tsqltuesdayIt’s that time of the month again, T-SQL Tuesday Tuesday. This month Argenis Fernandez, MCM, and big round SQL teddy-bear is hosting. His topic is Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

    The second Tuesday of every month is when the blog party takes off. If you want to participate, read Argenis’ post and write your own entry. If you want to host, contact Adam Machanic.

    Jack of All Trades, Master of None

    After my third year of college, I went to work at a new hotel in Virginia Beach. I hadn’t had much experience in the restaurant industry, other than cooking one semester at college, so they hired me to be a busboy and room service waiter. I opened the hotel working in the café, but the slow start caused some people to quit. When a waiter didn’t show up one day, I volunteered, got a chance, and moved up in the world. When a bartender didn’t show up one afternoon, I volunteered, and had a new gig for the rest of the summer.

    It’s been a mantra for me for the most part in my career. I like challenges, I like new things, and I’m not afraid to tackle much. The same way I moved up in the restaurant business to new (and better paying) jobs worked in technology. However the “jack of all trades” philosophy hasn’t been just about getting new jobs, but also being better at my main job.

    At more than a few companies, I’ve been happy to fill in for the network person, the sysadmin, the Exchange manager, the developer, doing my best to fix something or improve it. As I’ve been a DBA, I’ve worked on PHP, ASP, HTML, XML, Cisco IOS, configured T-1 lines, changed batteries in UPSes, and more. Those skills have helped me to understand how things are put together, and enabled me to solve more than a few complex problems, in complex architectures, because I could truly see the forest. Even if I didn’t understand how everything worked, I knew how lots of parts were supposed to work, and how they were plugged together.

    Even today in SQL Server, I write about all sorts of topics, and review pieces on all aspects of the SQL Server platform. I don’t know how to configure them all as an expert, but I know a lot about how most of the platform works, even if I don’t know all the details. Sometimes that’s enough to get me by.

    It’s not all perfect, and I don’t think being Jack is better than being a master. There are more jobs for the “Jacks” of the world, but the pay tends to be lower. Masters make more, but have fewer opportunities, and fewer places they might get to live/work at any point in time. There’s a (I think) higher level of satisfaction from being a master in some area of your field, and I can appreciate that. I’ll also say that most of the “masters” I know that are fairly specialized have this innate motivation to learn more about their topic, which bleeds off into other sections of their field, making them knowledgeable in a “Jack” way on other parts of their industry.

    In the end, I think it’s fine to be a Jack or a master, just be true to yourself. Do the things that you enjoy, and if that’s one or the other, you should have a great career.

  • The T-SQL Tuesday #027 Roundup

    UPDATE: I found a few more posts, and have added them to the round up. Trackbacks didn’t work for some reason.

    I didn’t have quite the level of participation for T-SQL Tuesday #027 that I would have liked. I understand it was a holiday, and many people might have been otherwise occupied (a good thing), and there’s less work for my round up (a good thing), but less information out there (a bad thing). Perhaps it wasn’t a great topic, but in any case, here’s the roundup.

    In the early hours of the day, Rob Farley in Australia gave is a short preview of Big Data coming in 24 hours of PASS.

    Right behind Rob, Pinal Dave in India gave a simple explanation of Big Data that I thought made it easy to understand some of the concepts behind how Big Data and SQL Server fit together.

    Sebastian Meine wrote an interesting piece on purging data, and how large data manipulation operations can benefit from indexing.

    The SQL Philosopher talks about some of the challenges of rapidly growing data in his environment.

    Vinod Kumar has a nice summary of what the challenges of Big Data in general can be.

    Bob Pusateri has a post on why he loves Big Data. I agree with him that Big Data gives the DBA a chance to shine, but also a chance for lots of headaches. You have to decide how you feel about that.

    Mike Walsh has a post on what he’s doing with Big Data, and Hadoop, with a client of his. An interesting read on the application of large data sets.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #027 – The Big Data Valentine’s Edition

    tsqltuesdayIt’s T-SQL Tuesday time again, and I’m honored to be able to host the party for February 2012. This is my second time hosting, with the first being #013.

    T-SQL Tuesday is the brainchild of Adam Machanic, who hosted the very first blog party. If you’d like to be a host, contact Adam on his blog. The complete list of older topics is here: T-SQL Tuesday Topics – February 2012, so you can pick a new one if you’d like to host.

    Note, this is advance notice. The party is NOT today, it’s next week, February 14, 2012.

    The Rules

    Here are the rules your post must follow.

    1. Your post must go live between 00:00:00 GMT on Tuesday February 14, 2012 and 00:00:00 GMT on Wednesday February 15, 2012.
    2. Your post must link back to this post, and the link must be anchored from the logo (found above) which must also appear at the top of your post.
    3. Leave a comment or a trackback here on this blog regarding your post.
    4. ‘T-SQL Tuesday #027’ should be included in the title of the post.
    5. If you’re on Twitter, tweet about your post using the hash tag #TSQL2sDay

    Big Data

    godivaThe party falls on Valentine’s Day this month, and I thought a little notice would let you get your post done early, and then spend the day with your loved ones

    Since the media has a love affair with Big Data right now, I thought this would make an interesting topic. Data is the lifeblood of our careers and of many organizations. Slowly governments, companies, and individuals are becoming aware of just how important data is to us, and as they do, they want more of it. More storage, more access, and more analysis.

    That creates challenges for us as data professionals. We will have to learn to better manipulate, aggregate, summarize, and handle larger volumes of data in the future. I think this means we will have lots of employment in this area, and it means tremendous opportunity for those that learn to work with data well.

    This month I want to hear what big data problems you’ve solved, or interesting ways of working with big data, challenges that you struggle with, or cool hardware tricks that mask the problems in your code.

    Think big, and let us know how you work with Big Data.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #027 – Invitation to The Big Data Valentine’s Edition

    tsqltuesdayIt’s T-SQL Tuesday time again, and I’m honored to be able to host the party for February 2012. This is my second time hosting, with the first being #013.

    T-SQL Tuesday is the brainchild of Adam Machanic, who hosted the very first blog party. If you’d like to be a host, contact Adam on his blog. The complete list of older topics is here: T-SQL Tuesday Topics – February 2012, so you can pick a new one if you’d like to host.

    Note, this is advance notice. The party is NOT today, it’s next week, February 14, 2012.

    The Rules

    Here are the rules your post must follow.

    1. Your post must go live between 00:00:00 GMT on Tuesday February 14, 2012 and 00:00:00 GMT on Wednesday February 15, 2012.
    2. Your post must link back to this post, and the link must be anchored from the logo (found above) which must also appear at the top of your post.
    3. Leave a comment or a trackback here on this blog regarding your post.
    4. ‘T-SQL Tuesday #027’ should be included in the title of the post.
    5. If you’re on Twitter, tweet about your post using the hash tag #TSQL2sDay

     

    Big Data

    godivaThe party falls on Valentine’s Day this month, and I thought a little notice would let you get your post done early, and then spend the day with your loved ones

    Since the media has a love affair with Big Data right now, I thought this would make an interesting topic. Data is the lifeblood of our careers and of many organizations. Slowly governments, companies, and individuals are becoming aware of just how important data is to us, and as they do, they want more of it. More storage, more access, and more analysis.

    That creates challenges for us as data professionals. We will have to learn to better manipulate, aggregate, summarize, and handle larger volumes of data in the future. I think this means we will have lots of employment in this area, and it means tremendous opportunity for those that learn to work with data well.

    This month I want to hear what big data problems you’ve solved, or interesting ways of working with big data, challenges that you struggle with, or cool hardware tricks that mask the problems in your code.

    Think big, and let us know how you work with Big Data.