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The Voice of the DBA
 

The Team You Want

Brent wrote about what a good DBA looks like and challenged people to write a testimonial for them. There are some great comments on the post, and some funny ones. It's worth a read when you need a break from other work. I especially chuckled at the picture Brent used. I think ours was better.

That got me thinking: what do I want in a team? Or maybe, who do I want in a team?

I have a great team now, but we are fairly distributed and work independently. I have great co-workers at Redgate, though I don't often work that closely with any of them. I work often with some of them, for specific things, but usually it's coordination rather than the tight, back and forth I've often had with technical teams.

I realized at some point in my career that I was often being asked to do the same work. I needed to manage systems. I needed to write and tune queries (or rewrite those for others). I needed to manage security. Most importantly, I needed to find solutions to the constant set of questions, problems, and demands from others in my organization. I learned how to teach myself things, how to research, how to test, and how to talk to others. I became good at clarifying what people needed and then finding a way to meet those needs. I think I turned into part of the Incredible DBA Team, even though often it was a team of just me.

The characteristics Brent talked about were important to me.

A little. I have always felt that I could work with others if they want to learn from me and teach me things. They have to want to collaborate and get things done as a team. That led me to worry more about who I worked with than what the job was. If they compensation was good, then the decision to take a job often came down to who would I work with. After all, the work was often very similar.

Think about your situation. What do you want to see in your coworkers? I'm sure you want people that you get along with and carry their weight. Maybe you want to learn from them. Maybe you want to be able to teach them. Maybe you have specific skills you wish were stronger on your team.

Leave a comment and let us know what your ideal team looks like. As always, if you want to leave an anonymous comment, send me a PM on the site with what you'd like posted in the discussion.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums

 
 Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

How to Use SQL to Analyze the Bitcoin Blockchain

Parthprajapati from SQLServerCentral

You will learn how a blockchain works and then use a SQL database to analyze data from a series of transactions.

Technical Article

Decision Tree - Credit Card Fraud Detection

Additional Articles from CodeProject.com

Credit card fraud detection is an important application of machine learning techniques, including Decision Trees. The goal is to identify and detect fraudulent transactions and separate them from valid transactions to prevent financial loss and protect user accounts.

Technical Article

SQL Unit Testing reference guide for beginners

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from SQL Shack

In this article, we are going to learn the basics of SQL unit testing and how to write a SQL unit test through the tSQLt framework.

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - Focusing on a Different S Curve

DataOnWheels from DataOnWheels

At the beginning of the year, I took a step back and looked at how far my career had grown. In large part because of the incredible data community,...

Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - A Multitude of Summary Views in SQL Compare 15

Steve Jones - SSC Editor from The Voice of the DBA

A client asked for a summary of changes, so I wrote a post to show where to find this in SQL Compare 15. As I was checking out the...

Practical Database Auditing for Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL

Practical Database Auditing for Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL: Troubleshooting, Regulatory Compliance, and Governance

Site Owners from SQLServerCentral

Know how to track changes and key events in your SQL Server databases in support of application troubleshooting, regulatory compliance, and governance. This book shows how to use key features in SQL Server ,such as SQL Server Audit and Extended Events, to track schema changes, permission changes, and changes to your data. You’ll even learn how to track queries run against specific tables in a database. ss

 

 Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):

 

The Incomplete Standby

I have a backup of a database from SQL Server 2019 that I want to restore on another SQL Server 2019 instance. The version levels are the same. I run this command:
USE [master]
RESTORE DATABASE [sandbox3] FROM  DISK = N'D:\SQLBackup\New folder\sandbox_20210308.bak' WITH  FILE = 1
,  STANDBY 
,  NOUNLOAD,  STATS = 5
GO
What happens?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.

 

 

 Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

Creating an Old Symmetric Key

I have a database that I upgraded from SQL Server 2012 to SQL Server 2016. We set the compatibility mode to SQL Server 2016 and everything works just as it did on SQL Server 2012.

This database had data that was already encrypted with the DES algorithm. We want to create a new symmetric key to do some testing on upgrading the encryption. I run this command, which matches what was used to create the original key, with a different object name:

CREATE SYMMETRIC KEY PIIKey WITH ALGORITHM = DES, IDENTITY_VALUE='SomethingN3w', KEY_SOURCE = 'Someth!ngBl&e' ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'MyS3cr#tP@ssword'
GO

What happens?

Answer: They key isn't created

Explanation: Beginning with SQL Server 2016, older encryption algorithms were deprecated and cannot be created unless the database compatibility mode is set to 120 or lower. This is SQL Server 2014. Ref: CREATE SYMMETRIC KEY - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/create-symmetric-key-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.


SQL Server 2017 - Development
TSQL Question - hi, I have a stage table S, and a final/Target table T with all user details. I need to update a field  in Target Table T , Field is "active" flag  for the user, if there is user /record missing in stage table S  , the field "active" value  will  be "N" for inactive user […]
Administration - SQL Server 2014
Server memory question - I would like to know please how much memory I should add to my server here is what I have 51452 in MB and we be adding more data and databases,please recond how better to maintain
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Securing access to SQL Instance - Hi, I have a need to harden-down users access to a SQL Server instance. I have a number of SQL authenticated accounts that need to be able to create and curate database objects on a dedicated schema. At the moment they have membership of the ddl_admin role on the database, however this is proving insufficient […]
Can I set the publisher database into read-only mode - Hi - Can you set the db into read-only mode if it’s part of replication. As part of migration, I need to set the DBs into read-only mode before I take final backup. Can I do this if the replication is still active to another server?
ALTER or DROP TABLE could not clean up root row within 10 seconds - We keep getting these errors quite frequently. How do we troubleshoot and fix these errors ? Are they benign in nature or need to be fixed. Please advise.
SQL Server 2019 - Development
SQLCMD output - I have a script that outputs a query to a text file. When using -o I am pointing to a shared directory on another server. Does sqlcmd use smb (445) or port 139 to connect when writing the file?
if condition select into temp table - Hi, I have a query where I search and provide the result. select * into #a from( Select ID, 1 as counter from TableA where ID=@id union all select ID, 2 as counter from TableB where ID=@id)a declare @tocheck integer set @tocheck =(select tocheck from #a) if @tocheck=1 DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #partA begin insert […]
Amazon AWS and other cloud vendors
Is AWS the right choice for a dirt-simple API for myself only? - I’ve written a little Python script to post to multiple social medias at once, and I want somewhere to host it as an API so I don’t have to set up a static IP, keep a raspberry pi going etc. Essentially I want to be able to send a post request to this and have […]
Connecting
MS OLE DB Driver for SQL Server vs MS OLE DB Driver 19 for SQL Server - I have two OLE DB drivers installed. Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server and Microsoft OLE DB Driver 19 for SQL Server https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/oledb/major-version-differences?view=sql-server-ver16#Driver%20name%20changes Is it possible to uninstall the un-versioned driver (Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server) without breaking anything?  Or must it be retained due to possible software dependency? Also, it looks like […]
Updates for multiple SQL Server ODBC versions - We have computers on our network with multiple ODBC versions installed on the same machine.  For example, on one machine there is Microsoft ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server 17.10.3.1 and Microsoft ODBC Driver 18 for SQL Server 18.1.2.1 Because of possible software dependency, it looks like you have to keep both versions and install […]
Integration Services
Merging Data Sets in similar way as VLookup - I want to automate my manual Vlookup using Excel to SQL/SSIS. Table: is used with   The columns that are the same colour are used for Vlookup. Currently. I am having trouble loading data from tables with non primary/secondary keys to tables with  primary and secondary keys (tables:). Error I am getting: SSIS package "C:\Users\Anthony.DESKTOP-ES5HL78\source\repos\WeatherDataETL_\WeatherDataETL\WeatherDataETL\Package3.dtsx" […]
SQL Server 2022 - Administration
Just updated server to 2022 - CXSYNC_PORT waits - HELP! - Hi Updated from SQL2014 to SQL2022 today. Seeing a ton of CXSYNC_PORT waits. Its as if something is not configured correctly, What can I check? This in an on-premise server. SQL22 ENTERPRISE Microsoft SQL Server 2022 (RTM-CU1) (KB5022375)
SQL Server 2022 - Development
Performance related issue in the report after adding new table in the sp . - I have an issue in the report. Have added new table in the SP. After adding new table report rendering gets hanged and never processes below is the stored procedure this is the table added in the query last   UM_Risk_ICRA_FI_Rating_ICRA_ST_LT_Mapping_CP_CD_Table this table contains 4 lakh records CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[RPT_IssuerRatingNew] /* Issuer Rating */ --Declare […]
how new window clause works in following case. - hi, can i get one example of following from this link https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/select-window-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16 "If the is contained in a that is part of which is a simple table query, then the scope of the new window_name also includes the , if any, of that ."   yours sincerley
Multicolumn indexes and fragmentation - Is there anything special you should think of concerning index fragmentation and multicolumn indexes (sorry for possible bad terminology)? I am not sure how to think here, if I need to think about it all. Currently I've got a index that looks like this:  int, int, bit, datetime. I think it's easier to understand when […]
 

 

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