How to keep an intern busy

  • Greetings,

    We're getting some interns in the office and I was looking for advice from DBAs who have had interns or currently have interns.

    I'm having a hard time imagining work that I would trust an intern with, or that I could spend the time to train up an intern to do anything useful.

    Admittedly, I have serious trust issues (thus the career path) so I'm looking for tips from the greater world where well-adjusted DBAs might have had positive experiences utilizing interns.

    Thanks for any tips you might have.

    ~Craig

  • Well, the first thing I'd ask is what grunt work would you like to be able to offload to these interns? Are these first year interns (so I'd assume)?

    First thing I'd probably offload on them would be some older 'fixits' that have been shelved. Those billion tiny things that never seem to get done. Along the way hand 'em a copy of Grant Fritchey's book (downloadable from here for free, btw, as an eBook) and let 'em loose on a few larger queries to see how things perform (in dev, of course).

    Once that's occurred, you get an idea for each person's skill level, and ability to learn quickly. You can then adjust who's doing what (coffee making and fridge cleaning vs. index research) as necessary.


    - Craig Farrell

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  • 1. If fine, ask him to analyze the SQL Server and Windows server configuration settings in your environment and come up with his findings

    2. Ask him to make a list of perfmon counters that are required to analyze the workings of the SQL Server

    3. Gradually make him to setup the perfmon traces with the basic counters and ask him to analyze those log files and identify any bottlenecks that he thinks

    4. Ask him to check for the Failed Jobs and backups and then make a Root cause analysis of those failures

    5. Ask him to analyze the SQL Server and Event viewer logs and analyze the errors and warnings

    6. Ask him to wite basic T-SQL Queries to accomplish certain simple tasks and working with linked servers

    7. Familiarize him with the SQL Server Maintenance Plans to do the regular SQL Server Maintenance

    8. Educate him on the SQL Server Security like creating Logins, Users, assigning them permissions, xp_cmdshell etc..,

    Thank You,

    Best Regards,

    SQLBuddy

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