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Daily Coping Tip Listen to a piece of music without doing anything else I also have a thread at SQLServerCentral dealing with coping mechanisms and resources. Feel free to participate.
For many of you out there working in a new way, I'm including a thought of the day on how to cope in this challenging time from The Action for Happiness Coping Calendar. My items will be on my blog, feel free to share yours. |
Easily Repeating Work I love this idea from Ken Fisher: saving your work. I don't act as a DBA anymore, but when I did, I did something similar. We often logged the scripts we used in a file, as a part of a log, so that if we broke something and another DBA got a new ticket, they could check what you had done. Over the years, we tried two different methods. First was using the desktop of the instance itself, since we often went to a room to log into the server in those days The second way was in an Exchange public folder, where we added a new entry for each day. This way we could note the server and the scripts run. Since most tickets were dated, we could easily find the scripts if we were looking at a ticket. Since a user often updated or re-opened the ticket, we could use the public folder as a central note location from the DBA team. We could even point to this folder for our ISO and SOX auditors to show them what had been logged by people who supported the systems. However, the one thing missing in there, from my perspective, is version control. While I think it is important to track these scripts in a team of DBAs, I also think we want to ensure that as we grow and change this scripts, we know how and why. A DBA might alter one of these scripts and break something, just as developers refactor code and introduce bugs or break functionality. After all, these scripts are code. If there is a problem, we want to be able to roll back, which means that we ought to save these scripts into a repository of some sort. While I like the idea of a share that all DBAs can access, I more like the idea of a (secure) Git repository that can be downloaded anywhere, provides a backup in another location, and can be audited over time. All of these are important features that any enterprise, especially one that is regulated, should implement. DBA person gets hit by the proverbial bus. I like collaboration, sharing knowledge, and tracking the work you do in a team. It's important for raising the skills of everyone on the team and helping new members get up to speed quickly. This facilities consistent results, and if done using a tool like version control, helps ensure that your scripts are backed up in a way that preserves the knowledge in your code through any changes made by the team. Steve Jones - SSC Editor Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums |
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