Author Archives: Brad

What's Your Ideal DBA Job?

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As a DBA, you most often have little control over what duties you perform, how much time you allocate to specific tasks, your work environment and, of course, your salary and benefits. Here is what I was thinking: If you could “design” yourself the perfect DBA job, what would it entail? To get you started thinking, here are some ideas:

  • Working Hours: 32 – 40 hours a week. No more overtime or working nights or weekends.
  • Flexible Hours: You pick when you work.
  • Work Environment: Work from home, have a private office at work.
  • Location: The ability to pick the physical location of where you work, such as a particular city, or even location within a city.
  • Amiable Co-Workers: Everybody gets along well with everyone else, and everybody tries to help each other.
  • Job Duties: You can pick and choose what you do every day, focusing your efforts on those areas that interest you most.
  • Salary: Enough to cover current expenses, enough extra to have some fun, and enough to retire by the time you are 50.
  • Benefits: 100% paid health care for your entire family, 4 weeks of paid vacation.
  • Learning Opportunities: 2,3 or 4 weeks of paid training/conferences every year.
  • Corporate Culture: A place where all managers understand the value of DBAs.
  • Stable Company: A financially strong company that values its investment in its employees and never lays them off.
  • Work for Yourself: You work for yourself as a highly paid SQL Server consultant with so many clients you have to shoo them away.

I know these are crazy wishes, but let’s have some summer fun and dream a little bit. Tell us what your perfect DBA job would be like. And you can’t say that you want to win the lottery and not work at all. That would be cheating.  😉

How to Identify Important Characteristics for a DBA Job Candidate

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In the last year or so, there have been a lot of articles, blog entries,and forum posts on the kinds of technical questions hiring managers can ask a prospective DBA candidate in order to determine their technical proficiency. While technical skills are important for a DBA, I think a lot of hiring managers place too much emphasis on hard technical skills, and don’t place enough emphasis on the characteristics (personality traits) that DBAs need to have in order to be successful. In the rest of this blog entry, I want to suggest some characteristics that I think all DBAs should have. Continue reading →

Support Your Local SQL Server User’s Group

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SQL Server user groups can be a powerful tool in advancing your DBA career. I attend dozens of them every year, and I can personally vouch that taking a few hours out of your busy schedule each month to attend a meeting can produce a high rate of return. For example:

Learn Something New: The focus of most meetings is continuing education. Where else can you get free training on a monthly basis?

Network: Whether it is to keep up with old contacts, or to make new contacts, attending user group meetings allows you to connect with people who share the same career goals, and interests, you do.

Get Answers to Your Questions: If you have a difficult DBA-related question, ask other members for their help and advice.

Look for a New Job: If you are looking for a new job, let everyone know. Many job opportunities are never published, and a group of DBAs is the best source of this inside information.

Fill Vacant Positions: On the flip side, if your company has a DBA opening, share it with the group. It is a lot less expensive than taking out an ad or paying a technical recruiter.

Get Free Stuff: Most user groups meetings give out lots of free prizes, including tee-shirts, books, software, high-tech gadgets, and much more.

Get Involved: Besides attending user group meetings, many members like to get directly involved with the group, participating in user group governance, speaking, managing the user groups’ website, or volunteering  for helping out at a community event, such as local Code Camp, TechFest, or SQLSaturday. This high-level participation is great personal branding; helping to get your name known throughout the SQL Server community.

SQL Server user groups are scattered throughout the United States, and the world. In fact, there are more SQL Server user groups outside of the United States than inside. To find out if there is a user group in your area, visit the SQLPASS Chapters webpage. And if there isn’t a SQL Server user’s group in your area, start one. Information on how to start one is available from the SQLPASS’s Potential Chapter Resources webpage. Additional information on user groups can be found atwww.ugss.codezone.com.

So tell us what you think about SQL Server user groups. What benefits have you received from attending, and why would you recommend other DBAs to participate?

Does Maturity Make a DBA?

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I have been a DBA for about 14 years, and I have been fortunate to meet hundreds of other DBAs throughout my career, many of whom are now my friends, even though most of them live thousands of miles away from me.

While there are exceptions, most of the DBAs *I* have met seem to fit into one or more of the following categories:

  • Conservative, not necessarily in the political sense, but in how they conduct their lives.
  • Stable, dependable, and reliable.
  • Family-oriented, who puts their family first.
  • Hard-working, doing whatever it takes to get the job done, and providing for people close to them.
  • Community-minded, often helping others and volunteering their time for various community causes.
  • People of faith, participating in their chosen religion.

In other words, DBAs tend to be mature, responsible individuals, generally the kind of person that you would want as friend, or as a next door neighbor.

This has got me thinking. Are DBAs drawn to their work (as a DBA) because the nature of DBA work fits well with the characteristics described above, or is it because employers seek out such individuals with these characteristics, because they know these types of individuals will do a good job in a position of great responsibility? Of course, there’s also the possibility that their personal maturity is actually a secondary consideration to their professional maturity, and the two just happen to feed off each other. What I mean is that I think a lot of DBAs have already had first careers and are coming to this new arena later in life. It could be that employers are actually drawn to those of us who are wise in the ways of the world, and bring a longer perspective to the role.

So, what do you think? Are DBAs drawn to their work because of their maturity, or do organizations who hire DBAs tend to prefer mature employees? Or am I full of baloney, and perhaps DBAs are no different than anyone else?

TechEd 2009 Recap

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teched_speaker

Keynote speaker, Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President of Windows Business at Microsoft.

TechEd 2009 was started with a keynote presentation from Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President of Windows Business at Microsoft, which you can view at this link (along with many other videos from the event). He made several announcements, including that SQL Server 2008 R2 will become available the second half of 2010, and that the first public CTP will become available the second half of 2009. For more information on what will be included with SQL Server 2008 R2, and to optionally sign up to be notified when the CTP becomes available, click here.

As you might expect, the economy significantly hurt attendance at the event, with about 7,000 total attendees, much less than in previous years, when it has often sold out. Even with 7,000 people attending, the Los Angeles Convention Center never seemed to be extremely busy, other than the first day following the keynote. Friday had very light attendance, with a lot of people leaving early to play or go home.

Over the five days of the event, I attended 23 different SQL Server sessions, including Chalk Talks, Discussion Panels, and Breakout Sessions. Compared to last year’s TechEd, this year’s event had far fewer SQL Server-related sessions. For many time slots, I had only one or two other SQL Server-related sessions I could have attended. Both SQL Server Connections andPASS Community Summit, both coming up this November, will offer more SQL Server content that TechEd did this year.

I attended several sessions that discussed some of the new features to be found in SQL Server 2008 R2. For those of you who don’t know, late last year Microsoft announced three major initiatives for SQL Server 2008. They were called Kilimanjaro (KJ for short), Gemini, and Madison. At that time, it was very confusing as to what Microsoft was planning, especially given that the next release of SQL Server was not to become available until 2011.

After attending various sessions, I think I understand what Microsoft is doing with SQL Server 2008 R2, although we won’t know for sure until the public CTP becomes available later this year.

First of all, Kilimanjaro is the code name for SQL Server 2008 R2. It includes many new features, such as multi-server management, increased scalability, better virtual server support, and much more. See this link for more details. While SQL Server 2008 R2 is an interim release of SQL Server, it is not SQL Server 2011 (or whatever name they will call the next version of SQL Server). SQL Server 2011 will be a major release, unlike SQL Server 2008 R2, which is essentially SQL Server 2008, with a few new features added. While there are many reasons why Microsoft is releasing SQL Server 2008 R2, one of the main reasons it is being released is to keep up with new features that will be available in Windows 2008 R2, Microsoft Office 2010, and Visual Studio 2010 (these names may not be the final names used when these products are released).

Second of all, Gemini is the code name for the new BI enhancements that will be included with SQL Server 2008 R2. In other words, Kilimanjaro refers to the non-BI enhancements available in SQL Server 2008 R2, while Gemini is the code name for the BI enhancements in SQL Server 2008 R2.

Third of all, Madison is the code name of a highly-scalable BI product that is not included in SQL Server 2008 R2. What makes this all the more confusing is that Madison will be released around the same time as SQL Server 2008 R2. Madison (or whatever name they end up using for this new product) will be sold separately from SQL Server 2008 R2, and is designed for very large data warehouses that need huge scalability. From what I understand, Madison will be sold as part of a hardware/software package from various vendors, such as HP and Dell. See this link for more information on Madison.

Although attending TechEd sessions was very educational, one of the biggest reasons to attend any conference are the networking possibilities. I meet with many different people I haven’t seen in a long time, and met many new people. In fact, I probably learned more from talking with other attendees than I did by attending sessions.

For those who want to attend TechEd next year, it will be held in New Orleans, LA, June 7-11, 2010.

Microsoft Offers User Groups Direct Support

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If you are a leader of a Microsoft-related user’s group, and you haven’t done so already, you will want to check out Microsoft’s User Group Support Services at ugss.codezone.com. Once your user’s group is registered and approved by Microsoft, a wealth of services of available to you, including financial support, help with finding sponsors, managing your membership and events, publicizing your events, finding speakers, and much more.