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T-SQL & Development

DBA Candidates: Ask For A List of Servers

April 4, 2008

When interviewing for a database administrator position, ask the manager for a list of database servers, the applications that rely on them, and who to contact when the server goes down.

(The manager may express concern about the secure nature of the list, and that's fair - I would say the same thing. If they don't want to hand over the list, then just ask them to put their hands on it and answer the rest of the questions for you.)

T-SQL & Development

DBA 101: It Takes Confidence

March 28, 2008

A good database administrator projects confidence - without being a jerk.

This positive yet firm attitude helps the DBA accomplish their job in tough situations:

SQL Server 2005 Setup Checklist Part 2: After The Install

March 23, 2008

I've covered what needs to happen before you install SQL Server - now, let's talk about what to do immediately after the setup finishes.
Install not just the service packs, but also the cumulative updates.
Starting with SQL Server 2005's Service Pack 2, Microsoft releases hotfixes in cumulative packs. These updates do more than just fix bugs: they improve how SQL Server performs. These updates are free performance benefits - and who doesn't like that?

SQL Server 2005/2008/2012/2014 Setup Checklist

March 19, 2008

Ever wonder if you’re missing a step when you set up your SQL Server? Get a checklist to install and configure your SQL Server the right way! We've built an easy-to-follow SQL Server Setup Guide for systems administrators, DBAs, and developers that helps you prevent the most common issues we see out in the field. The guide…

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Changing Companies

March 10, 2008

When we moved from Miami to Houston for Erika's new job as an air traffic controller, my employer wasn't too sure whether or not telecommuting would work out. Southern Wine currently doesn't have a pro-telecommuting policy by any means: one company exec stood up at a company meeting and said they would "never" allow it,…

Don’t specify IP’s in your SQL connection string

February 29, 2008

In today's SQL newsletter from SQL-Server-Performance.com I was horrified to find the following tip: When you specify a server in an ADO.NET connection string, use the server's IP address, not the server's DNS name. By using an IP address instead of a DNS name, name resolution does not have to occur, reducing the amount of…

T-SQL & Development

What’s the Largest Database You’ve Worked With?

February 6, 2008

When hiring a production DBA, I start by asking them, "In terms of file size, what's the largest database you've worked with?" In a perfect world, we'd only hire very experienced candidates, people who've worked with larger databases than we're dealing with. In reality, though, we can't always afford those candidates - if they're even…

SQL 2008 release date pushed back

January 25, 2008

Remember all the hoopla when SQL 2005 came out? Microsoft swore we'd get more frequent releases because the 5-year lag after SQL 2000 meant it wasn't worth paying for Software Assurance on SQL Server. They promised we'd get new stuff faster.

Fast forward to today's announcement:

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Microsoft Technology Center: The DBA Experience

December 16, 2007

Our contacts at Microsoft offered us the services of a Microsoft Technology Center to do a two-week lab exercise on our data warehouse. We'd kept piling one application after another on our data warehouse SQL Server until the poor thing was plain out of maintenance windows and couldn't keep up, and we needed info from the pros to keep scaling it up.

At Microsoft’s Technology Center in Chicago

December 5, 2007

Carlos and I flew into Chicago midday yesterday, and a winter storm came in right after us. We're at Microsoft's Technology Center on Wacker drive, and our work area on the 23rd floor has a wall of windows with a great view of the city. We watched the sky get darker in the afternoon as…

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Production DBA

SQL Server Backup Software: Part 1 – Why Native SQL Backups Suck

November 27, 2007

Before we start looking at SQL Server backup compression software, we need to spend a few minutes looking at the weaknesses of the native SQL Server backup process. In order to judge the fixes, we have to know what's broken. Native SQL Server backups take the same disk space as the data. When we back…

SQL Performance Tuning: Estimating Percentage Improvements

November 11, 2007

When I'm doing performance tuning on an application in the early stages of its lifecycle (or any app that's never had DBA attention before), I end up with a ton of recommendations within the first day of performance tuning. The resulting to-do list can seem overwhelming to project managers and developers, so I include one of the following two sentences as a part of each recommendation:

Production DBA

SQL Server Backup Best Practices

October 17, 2007

I've been backing up SQL Servers for almost a decade now, and it's time to share the lessons I've learned. All of this is my own opinion - your mileage may vary - but I'll try to explain the reasoning behind the choices I make. I won't address log shipping or snapshots this time around.…

Ugly month of outages

August 17, 2007

The past month has been a real challenge, filled with 70-80 hour weeks and clawing back from one disaster after another.

In late June, IBM recommended that we upgrade the firmware on our DS4800 SAN controllers to fix some problems. We obliged, and two days later, our Exchange cluster rebooted without warning. We'd been having some other problems with those servers anyway, so we didn't connect the dots. A few days later, the reboot happened again, and then again.

SQL Server Perfmon (Performance Monitor) Best Practices

December 30, 2006

Database administrators need to know each SQL Server's weakest link so we know where to focus their hardware budgets and time. On any given server, we need to know what the slowest component is, and where it'll pay off to invest hours and dollars. This is performance tuning, and the first place to start is by using Performance Monitor.

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DBA 101: The Always-On Workstation

December 30, 2006

DBAs need an in-office computer to run overnight and weekend performance logs, traces, and long-running queries. For example, let's say you need to run a long series of maintenance queries to rebuild indexes over the weekend. You shouldn't be remote-desktopping into your production servers to run this query: instead, you just need a simple workstation that you can leave logged-in, with the desktop locked, that runs the query.

Budgeting 101 for SQL Server database administrators

November 23, 2006

It's that beautiful time of year when everybody watches the colors. No, not the changing browns and reds of the foliage, but the red and black numbers on P&L statements. That's right - it's budget time.

In order to build a good database budget, we have to ask our managers a few key questions:

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I’m getting a Macbook Pro!

July 11, 2006

YES! YES! YES!

Or as they say in the World Cup, GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

Why open source will triumph: one big community

April 19, 2006

For the past few days, I've complained a couple of times about the lack of testing on my new Cingular 8125. My troubles continue with the MMS integration. The device has a great digital camera, and it has great email support, but do the two work together? Not so much. STEPS TO REPRODUCE: 1. Take…

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Performance Tuning

SQL Server training for developers: primary keys & indexes

April 16, 2006

I had to do some developer training last week and I wrote up a paper on the basics of primary keys and indexes. Sure, there's tons of similar stuff around the net, but this is MINE, baby.
Our Table: Phone Numbers
For our evil training purposes, let's say we work for the phone company, and we need a database table with phone numbers. We need to track: