Alphabet Blocks and a Solid Foundation

Continuing in the theme from last week’s post correlating the DBAs role to aspects of various careers (Pilots, Chefs and Doctors) an illustration came to me this past weekend.
I was playing blocks with my 1 year old son. The game with him consists of me trying to hold him back for as long as possible [...]

March 22nd, 2009 | Tags: , , | Category: Best Practices, Life Lessons, Professional Development, Syndicate | Leave a comment

PASS Call for Speakers (…and my answer to that call)

I was in a company offsite meeting yesterday so I missed the fanfare on twitter and the blogosphere about the opening of the call for speakers.
Brent Ozar blogged about it, Thomas LaRock blogged about it… Countless others on my blogroll also blogged about it. The bottom line is go to the PASS speaker resources site [...]

March 21st, 2009 | Tags: , , | Category: PASS 2009, Syndicate, training | 3 comments

Checklists, Recipes and Algorithms

What do checklists, recipes or algorithms have to do with Database Administration? A lot… If we study a few career paths we can see how a checklist or process flow  makes their lives easier. I love stealing ideas from everyday life, working them into something useful for my DBA career and I think we have [...]

March 16th, 2009 | Tags: , , | Category: Best Practices, Life Lessons, Pet Peeve, Professional Development, Syndicate | 11 comments

Analysis Services Command Job Step Failure

Just uncovered an already reported and fixed (in SQL Server 2008) bug with Analysis Services job steps reporting success even if your MDX or XMLA in the step failed.
The troubleshooting that worked up to the issue also reiterates points I made when discussing troubleshooting methodologies and empirical evidence.
The Problem
Some changes were made by developers to [...]

March 5th, 2009 | Tags: , , | Category: Analysis Services, Best Practices, Pet Peeve, Syndicate | 2 comments

Where do I start?!?!

As a SQL Server DBA, where do I start?
So you are a new DBA. Maybe you are someplace that hasn’t had a DBA, maybe you are someplace that didn’t have a great DBA. Requests are piling up, your head is spinning with the instances you are discovering and people are getting excited that there is [...]

March 5th, 2009 | Tags: , , , | Category: Best Practices, DBA, Pet Peeve, Syndicate | 3 comments