SQL Aloha

The Exceptional DBA’s Code of Conduct

This is a reprint of chapter 11 of my book, How to Become an Exceptional DBA, 2nd Edition, which is available as a free e-book here.
Physicians, attorneys, accountants, engineers, realtors, and many other professionals have written guidelines designed to discourage misconduct and illegal activity, and to promote the ethical conduct of their members. In fact, ...read more

Handling Inconvenient Requests

"You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want." – Zig Ziglar

Early in my career, I read a lot of books by self-help gurus, seeking advice on how to make my career successful. While I learned a lot ...read more

Challenging the Tyranny of Third-Party Vendors: A DBA’s Manifesto

Over the years, I have dealt with a lot of third-party applications (and their vendors) that use SQL Server as their back-end databases. It has often been an uneasy relationship, fraught with pain and tribulation. The overriding feeling I have gotten from most of these vendors is that they could care less about the DBAs ...read more

Are You a Giver or a Taker?

I have been involved in the SQL Server community since 2000, and during the past nine years I have seen hundreds of volunteers donate large amounts of their time to the community. For example:

DBAs who answer tens of thousands of questions on SQL Server news groups and forums.
DBAs who write blogs and articles for no ...read more

What Do You Do When Your Employer Doesn’t Want to Support Your DBA Career?

At the 2009 PASS Community Summit, I have gotten the opportunity to talk to many DBAs, and to find out about what it is like to work for their organizations. In my book, How to Become an Exceptional DBA, and in many of my presentations, I highly recommend DBAs get as much training as they ...read more

Have You Checked Out the SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP Yet?

Ever since the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of SQL Server 2008 R2 became widely available for download on August 12, I haven’t seen much discussion of this new version in the SQL Server media, websites, or blogs. Yes, there has been some coverage, but not to the level I would have expected for such a ...read more

Backup to the Cloud – No Excuses

I used to work at a multi-billion dollar organization and, like most organizations that big, they kept backups of all their databases offsite in case some major catastrophe destroyed the data center. There was only one problem with their otherwise excellent plan; the offsite location for the backup tapes was the building next door, a ...read more

What’s Your Ideal DBA Job?

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 ...read more