I spent most of my time at TechEd two weeks ago, volunteering to answer attendee's questions at Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 booth. It's always a very interesting exercise. While I have a lot of experience with SQL Server, and can answer a lot of questions, you can never predict exactly what you're going to get asked.

Firstly, I was surprised by the lack of what I would call "typical DBA questions". By that I mean questions from professional DBAs who run small- to moderate-size SQL Server shops, of the sort that you might typically see on the SQLServerCentral forums. Maybe the reason for this is right there: they are too busy to attend shows and get their answers from online forums! Or else they just didn't have any questions about their existing systems and were busy attending sessions and learning about all the new stuff.

In any event, the questions I got fell into essentially two categories. In the first category were questions from experienced DBAs who were managing very large SQL Server shops, running anywhere from 300 to 3000 SQL Server instances. These questions tended to be very specific and detailed, but often quite vast in scope. In order to properly answer some of them would have required a site visit and a lot of research into their business processes. In any event, I did my best to respond and, where necessary, passed them along to one of the Microsoft SQL Server product team for further advice.

The second category of questions was from very inexperienced DBAs and tended to be much more basic...occasionally so basic that I became a little concerned. One DBA told me how he had to reboot his SQL Server several times a week due to it "locking up". He seemed to have assumed that some serious bug in SQL Server was causing this. Having rarely, if ever, in 13 years as a DBA encountered the need to reboot SQL Server due to it "locking up", I was immediately suspicious.

After several additional questions it became clear that the problem wasn't SQL Server locking up. The problem was blocking caused by the application the users were running. I demonstrated to the DBA how to use Management Studio to identify blocking locks, including examining the offending code. I also showed him how he could kill the blocking connection without the need for anything as drastic as rebooting the server.

What scared me about this, and several other questions I received, was that it demonstrated a basic lack of understanding of how SQL Server worked, or how to use Management Studio. It made me wonder how many people out there have fallen into the role of DBA, or had it thrust upon them, without any of the knowledge or training they need to properly manage their company's data.

So what do you think? How scared should I be? Are there really lots of highly untrained DBAs out there who are putting their organization's data at risk, or did I just get an "unlucky" run of questions?

Brad M. McGehee