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Professional Development

Book Review: SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Let’s start with the obvious: yes, there’s a man on the cover smoking something. It’s probably not a coincidence that when I started writing this review, the iTunes Genius started playing Poison’s “Nothin’ But A Good Time.” There’s a reason they call it the Genius, and yes, I do have Poison in my MP3 collection,…

Book Review: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Management and Administration

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Production database administrators have to know at least a little about a lot of things: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Management and Administration How to install or upgrade SQL Servers How to build clusters How to plan for disaster recovery and high availability How to do performance tuning How to secure and protect databases The production…

More thoughts on career specialization

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Professional Development

K. Brian Kelley wrote a counterpoint to my recommendation that DBAs should specialize and focus their training. I respect Mr. Kelley a lot: he’s been in the United States Armed Forces. I don’t want to run into him in a dark alley. He’s a nice guy, and he’s got a lot of integrity, but that…

Things you know now…

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Professional Development

Mike Walsh (Twitter, blog) tagged me with a great question today: what do you wish you’d have known when you got started? Oh, where to begin… Pick one thing and get really good at it. Every year, there’s going to be some sexy new technology. Your friends are going to be all over it, and…

Putting ads on your old WordPress posts

Last Updated February 13, 2017

In my series on How to Get Started Blogging, one of the first things I talked about was deciding what you’re blogging for: money, career, or something else. That series focused on blogging for your career, but if you’re interested in going after money, there’s a WordPress plugin that I’ve found helpful. Whydowork AdSense will…

WhiteHouse.gov is not a blog.

Last Updated February 13, 2017

I keep hearing people patting themselves on the back saying, “Look – our President has a blog!” Hmmm. It doesn’t smell like a blog to me because: There’s no comments There’s no trackbacks There’s no personal touch – it’s very, very clearly written by marketers (and certainly not the President himself) If the White House…

Top 10 SQL Server DBA Interview Questions

Last Updated April 10, 2017

Brent Ozar Unlimited Team

Looking for someone with more than a couple years of experience? Here’s how to find out if they’re bluffing. Includes questions like, “I’m a developer – explain why I need a unique key on my table.” Of course, I don’t include the answers – that would make it too easy for people to read this blog and fake it!

Top 10 Questions To Ask During an Interview

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Brent Ozar Unlimited Team

#SQLPass, Professional Development

Before YOU take a job, here’s what you should ask. Have there been any layoffs in the last year? What’s the on-call policy like? Finding out these answers before it’s too late will save you from taking a really bad job. Believe me – I’ve been there.

Interview Tip: Don’t Stress Out

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Professional Development

I was just talking to a fellow blogger who’s going through an interview process, and we touched on something that bears repeating here. Interviewers don’t always expect you to know the answers. Sometimes they ask you a string of ugly, nasty technical questions that you can’t possibly have seen before. They might not be testing…

About those blogging rules…

Last Updated February 13, 2017

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about some guidelines for getting started with technical blogging. I’ve now gone and broke one of them – not editing your WordPress template. When CSS sharpie Jeremiah Peschka read of my desire to make my site span the full width of the page, he offered to give me…

How to Start a Technical Blog, Part 5: Blog Etiquette

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Blogging, Professional Development

Enough with the technical details – let’s talk manners. Give People Credit and Links If you hear about something from somebody else, credit ’em. The internet is huge, SQL Server is huge, and we all get help to find the stuff we need to do our jobs every day. We find stuff through other people,…

How to Start a Technical Blog, Part 4: WordPress Themes

Last Updated February 13, 2017

In my series this week on how to get started blogging, I’ve touched on the business of blogging for yourself, why you should use WordPress and how to configure it, and the best WordPress plugins. Today I’m going to focus on look and feel. WordPress uses a “theme” system to bundle images, CSS files and…

How to Start a Blog

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Blogging, Professional Development, Writing and Presenting

So you’ve been reading blogs for a while, and you want to know how to start a blog. It’s really easy, it pays off long term in your career, and it’s a great way to meet awesome people. I’m going to tell you all the things I wish somebody would have told me way back…

So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star, Part 2

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Professional Development

If my blog entry yesterday about my job as a SQL Server Expert at Quest Software sounds cool, then listen up: I’ll let you in on how to get a job like this. Be Really Passionate About Your Field I have the coolest job in the world – for me. My job would be absolute…

Live-blogging the Seattle PASS Summit Keynotes

Last Updated February 13, 2017

#SQLPass, Blogging

Whoa – I’ve hit the big time! I got an email inviting me to be one of a handful of SQL Server industry bloggers who’ll get reserved seating with power and internet access during the PASS Summit keynotes. Awesome! That means I’ll be able to post live updates via my Twitter feed and here on…

Being the Porsche of job candidates

Last Updated August 3, 2018

Professional Development

Stephen Wynkoop blogged about social networking as a part of the hiring process. I’ll sum it up in a line: like it or not, you are being Googled when you submit your resume. Get over it. Would you buy a car without searching for an online review? Sure, some people do – otherwise the dismal…

Cutting to the Chase

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Professional Development

People come running into the DBA’s corner office (okay, windowless cube) with all kinds of issues and they’re not sure what’s a database problem, what’s an application problem, or what is just a general complaint. Here’s some examples of vague requests: “Man, this application is so slow.” “The profit numbers on this report don’t seem…

Recommended Books for SQL Server DBAs and Developers

Last Updated February 14, 2017

Book Reviews, SQL Server

Here’s my favorite SQL Server books for 2016-2014: T-SQL Fundamentals – (updated for SQL 2016) – don’t be fooled by this “fundamentals” title, because everybody who writes T-SQL queries needs this book. It’s the manual we should have been given when we started, and everyone’s going to learn something about concurrency, performance, and updates here. T-SQL Querying…

8 DBAs talk about their jobs

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Professional Development

OdinJobs.com interviewed eight different DBAs from completely different backgrounds and careers. The one thing we’ve got in common is that we blog, but outside of that, we’ve got wildly different points of view about the career and what we like about SQL Server. I shall now copy/paste Jason Massie’s hard work at listing each person’s…

Getting Into a Database Administrator Position

Last Updated February 12, 2017

Professional Development

I got a question from Ron G asking how to go about changing positions from help desk to DBA. Here’s my thoughts: Build on what you already know. If you’re used to working on IBM AIX systems, for example, you’ll want to utilize some of that skillset by working with databases that run on AIX. …