Great DBAs do <blank>

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  • Great DBAs do always learning.

  • The Best DBAs Automate Everything[/url]

    You're welcome 😉

  • John.Sansom (6/22/2013)


    The Best DBAs Automate Everything

    Agreed. If you see your DBA sweating and typing a mile a minute you now something is wrong.



    ----------------
    Jim P.

    A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.

  • These articles can almost always be simplified into:

    "Great" (i.e. highly productive, effective workers who produce great results) <worker types> do:

    Business goal analysis

    Root cause analysis

    Current and Future contingency analysis

    Lessons learned analysis

    ... and implementation where it makes sense!

    Project planning to an appropriate level

    Design to an appropriate level

    Task modification so in the future, it's better/quicker/simpler/easier/more reliable/etc.

    Tool modification so in the future, it's better/quicker/simpler/easier/more reliable/etc.

    Document to an appropriate level

    Preventative maintenance

    Or, to put it in a simpler fashion:

    PPPPPPP (Proper Previous Planning Prevents [Profoundly] Poor Performance)

    It really doesn't matter what work you're doing, most of these things still apply - whether preventative maintenance is DBCC CHECKDB or making sure your knitting needles aren't cracking, it's still important. Whether task modification is automating a task using SQL Server, or deciding that you'll back Chevy Volts onto the lift so the battery's closer to the equipment required, it's still taking time to think now to save time doing in the future.

    All the specifics are just implementations of the general idea of: Always try to make the next time go better.

  • I guess my take on why there aren't so many articles on how to be a Great DBA is that it's a bit of a Catch 22. The Great DBAs are too busy doing and writing about great things and helping others rather than writing about being great. 😀 Brad would be an almost unique exception to that rule.

    As a bit of a sidebar, anything after Brad's book would, in fact, be anti-climatic. Chapter 2 of Brad's book is probably the finest and most important take there will ever be on what makes an "Exceptional DBA".

    To summarize in a single statement, we have to use what David Poole said many years ago and I quote him regularly... "If you're the first one people seek out for help rather than the last, you're probably an Exceptional DBA".

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • The mentioned "doing not bad" programmer (in which way? economically?) is definitely relying on work of other, much greater programmers, who created REUSABLE frameworks and libraries for him 🙂

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