Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

• Hey App, quit wasting my time sorting your data  – Every once in a while it’s good to have a bit of rant. Sprinkle it with a smidgen of humour, like Rob Sullivan(Blog|Twitter) and your definitely on to a winner. Preach on brother!
• Bad Habits to Kick : Thinking a WHILE loop isn’t a CURSOR – The man just keeps informing us of our wrong doing but for our own good of course. Here’s Aaron Bertrand (Blog|Twitter).
• SQL SERVER TABLE COLUMNS UNDER THE HOOD – I have a confession to make, I missed an awesome post for the roundup from some time ago. I know right! A fascinating look at some database engine internals from Remus Rusanu (Blog|Twitter).
• What IP are you listening on SQL – Sure there are a lot of ways you can do this but how would you get it done across a large number of instances? Using a little PowerShell magic of course. Here with the fairy dust it’s Amit Banerjee (Blog|Twitter).
• A Temporary Configuration – Continuing the crusade for automation and sharing a script for us to play this week it’s Mike Fal (Blog|Twitter).
• Execution Plans, What Do I Look At? – Given the man has written a number of publications on the subject this is information gold. Grant Fritchey (Blog|Twitter) sharing how he gets the job done.
• Removing Duplicate Dimension Rows in SSIS- Wandering into new territory but with confidence and flair, this week
  Michael J. Swart (Blog|Twitter) gives us some SSIS goodness.
• The SQLRAP Wrap Up – Sharing his experiences of using this Premier Support service it’s Mitchell Bottel (Blog|Twitter). I was not even aware that this service existed, interesting stuff!
• If you weren’t a DBA, what would you like to do? – A brilliant question from Brad McGehee (Blog|Twitter). I would naturally have been a worldclass sportsman, maybe darts? What would you like to do?
• Management Studio tricks you may or may not know about – This week I’m loving keyboard shortcuts, and there’s some great ones down in the Misc Technology posts section below. Back to SQL right now though, here’s the CSS SQL Server Engineers (Blog) with some SSMS tricks for you.

UK SQL Server Upcoming Events

Misc Technology Posts

This post is part two of the series Your Road to Becoming a DBA, where I talk about how you can forge your very own career path toward becoming the DBA you want to be. You can find part 1 here where I talked about the importance of Laying a Strong Foundation.

Acquiring Experience is Key

It seems like all the opportunities that are available out there for DBAs require at least a number of years experience. Companies are not hiring folks that have no prior experience and then training them up to where they need to be. The dilemma of already needing a DBA job to gain experience but then experience is needed to gain a DBA job in the first place, is one that I have talked about before on the How To Become a SQL Server DBA area of the blog. You need to have at least the basics mastered in order to get your foot in the door.

So what’s a budding DBA to do in order to gain more experience? You need to learn, grow and build experience from other sources:

• Forums – I cannot begin to say enough good things about how valuable SQL Server Forums are. Each day I will hit the forums to learn something new about SQL Server and you should too. They are an immense source of knowledge. If you know the answer to the posters question great, you can go ahead and share it so that others can benefit from what you know, whilst at the same time reinforce the knowledge in your own mind. When you don’t know the solution you can subscribe to and follow the discussions to ensure you learn it. You can find out my favourites in my Top 5 SQL Server Forums post.

• Start From a Parallel Discipline – Talk to existing Data Professionals in the community about how they got started as a DBA and you will hear a lot of stories about how originally they were hired to work in a similar discipline, such as a System Administrator, Software Developer or maybe even the dreaded SAN Admin. These folks were given the task to look after/troubleshoot SQL Server in addition to their existing responsibilities and things grew from there. With this in mind one strategy for gaining more experience then is to reach out to teams in your existing company that are already working with SQL Server. Another possibility could be to use your existing skills to acquire a position within an organisation that is using SQL Server technology and to ensure your keen interest to make a lateral move is clear from the outset.

• Certifications – There’s a lot of different opinion out there on how valuable these are. Just having a certification is not going to get you a DBA gig but they can get you to the interview and make you stand out from folks that don’t have them. Now I am a firm believer in the “learning” value of certifications but this only applies if you do it right i.e. actually learn the material and practice implementing it.To find out how to get the most from SQL Server certifications and really learn the material take a look at My Guide to Passing Exam 70-432. (Preachy Tangent: I’ve interviewed a lot of Data Professionals that have certifications listed on their CVs and guess what, I ask them questions directly relevant to the material covered and they had better know their stuff! We all know there are brain dumps out there to cheat your way through some of the certs but any half decent DBA with experience will see past such BS immediately. Don’t be that guy. By taking shortcuts you’re only cheating yourself).

• Local Community Opportunities – The talents of a Database Administrator are always in demand. There are some great ways that you can give something back to the local community in your area, whilst at the same time developing your skills and bolstering the experience on your CV. In the UK for example, there are charitable organisations that often seek the support of the technology community such as iT4Communities or GiveCampUK.

• Build Your Own Lab Environment – There are a lot of different features in the product and there are not many companies using them all. A great way to learn about the different features and gain experience is by getting your hands dirty and implementing them. You can even take things further by breaking the environment and then fixing it again, no really. Practice the different ways you can restore a database. What happens if you fail over a Mirrored database that is also a Replication Publication? Experimentation in a safe environment is a great way to learn. Get used to testing things, it’s an essential part of any robust development cycle used in the field.

What are some of your favourite resources and methods for acquiring more experience with SQL Server?

“I really hope you enjoyed this post. You can make sure to catch all my posts as well as content exclusive only to the blog by subscribing via Email or RSS. Thanks for reading.”

Last week I received an email from a reader who was looking for some advice on how to start their own journey on the road to becoming a DBA. I found this really quite inspiring and it got me thinking about how to go about forging the path to being the DBA you want to be. It reads:

Hi John,

I follow you on twitter and have recently discovered your website. I personally think it is very motivating and has a great layout. I will tell you a little about myself to start off and also attach my CV.

My name is **** ****. I am 21 and currently work in IT & Telephony support for a travel agent. I have gained a lot of my experience within IT by self-teaching, online tutorials, books and watching people when they work.

I am very eager to fulfil my passion to become a SQL DBA, a few reasons why I am choosing this path to take in life. I think this would be a very challenging and motivating career. One at the end of a project you will feel somewhat great about what you have done. I think it’s a occupation where I would always be learning and a great profession to work up as junior to the top.

I was wondering if you could help me to fulfil my passion to become a SQL DBA, tips, any companies you know off that is willing to take me on as a junior DBA, giving me to time and proper hands on training I need to show them I could become a great asset to their company, Book, Quick course I could be taking.

I appreciate all the help you can give. I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this.

Best regards,

First, congratulations are in order for having chosen to pursue the path of the DBA. You’ve made an excellent decision and one that I have no doubt will be very rewarding should you so wish. You raise some great questions. Questions that I myself have had and I’m sure other readers have had too. I’ll try to answer them as best I can and perhaps other readers would also like to share some of their thoughts.

To avoid bombarding you super busy readers with too much content, I thought it best to break things up into a number of smaller, more consumable posts and so over the next few days I’m going to share with you how to create your very own path to becoming a DBA. We’re going to look at:

• The importance of Laying a Strong Foundation
• Why Gaining Experience is the Key to getting started
• Books for the Aspiring DBA
• Writing a Winning CV
• How to Get Organised to Get Ahead

Here then are some of my own thoughts, that I wanted to share with you all here, on how you can go about building your own path to becoming a DBA.

Laying a Strong Foundation

As with any serious endeavour, you want to get yourself off on the very best possible start in order to ensure things can move forward optimally from thereon in. Becoming a DBA is naturally no different and there are couple of things that I personally consider important to creating a good strong foundation from which a DBA can grow.

• What’s the primary responsibility of a DBA? - I’m glad you asked because it’s from here that all other things DBA should exude from. In other words, what is the point of a DBA and why would a company need one? You can find out exactly what I’m talking about in my post The Database Administrators Primary Responsibility.
• Relational Theory – SQL Server and in fact all other RDMSs (Relational Database Management Systems) are built on the time tested concepts of relational theory. Learning relational theory will give you the fundamental knowledge you need to start to piece together what the majority of database systems are all about. Not to mention what fun can be had with Normalization. Relational Theory is a transferable skill and one that will give you an understanding that can be applied to most things database design you will do initially. In my opinion it is something that all good DBAs should know. You can learn most of this stuff from the Internet but I would suggest going out and finding a copy of a classic text, such as something that would be used for a University course, for example Database Systems by Connolly & Beg et al.
• What’s the current Landscape Like? - To get ahead of the curve, start learning about the more recent developments in this space now rather than later or when you actually need to on the job itself. The professional landscape that we DBAs operate in is changing and at a faster pace than it has done for quite some time. A lot of DBAs already established in the field are resisting change, use this to your advantage and start building the skills that will be required in the future right now. Think cloud technology or NoSQL solutions for example. What are they? How are they different and when might you want to use them?
• It’s Not Just About Databases – Sure being a DBA requires a good technical knowledge but that’s just one part of it. In order to be an Outstanding DBA your going to want to work on and develop a number of other desirable traits. See 10 Character Traits of Outstanding DBAs for more on this.

What do you think about creating a strong foundation as a Database Administrator?

Be sure to keep an eye out for part 2 to find out why I think Acquiring Experience is Key.

“I really hope you enjoyed this post. You can make sure to catch all my posts as well as content exclusive only to the blog by subscribing via Email or RSS. Thanks for reading.”

Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

• Bad Habits to Kick : Using AS instead of = for column aliases - Are you guilty of this bad habit? Maybe you don’t even consider it to be a bad habit? Here’s Aaron Bertrand (Blog|Twitter) with his thoughts.
• The 5 DBA Interview Questions You Have to Ask - Getting straight down to business, Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) tells you what you need to be asking to hire your next DBA.
• Statistics and Recompilations - A really good piece of writing and a not so well known gem of knowledge here from Erin Stellato (Blog|Twitter).
• Monitoring – Where to start? - Taking it to the next level, Service Level that is, it’s Mike Fal (Blog|Twitter) showing how you can lay the ground work for professional quality monitoring for your customers.
• How It Works: sys.dm_tran_session_transactions - DMV internals insight from the CSS SQL Server Engineers (Blog).
• DBAs and the Career-Life Balance - Striking the balance but how, asks Brad McGehee (Blog|Twitter).
• How It Works: sys.dm_io_pending_io_requests - More DMV internals insights from the CSS SQL Server Engineers (Blog)
• Understanding Database Choice - Adorning the consultant hat this week it’s Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter), explaining why it is so important to consider the bigger picture in order to understand what’s really being asked.
• Rebuild Your Indexes Online (When You Can) - Introduction? None required reader! More high calibre content from Michael J. Swart (Blog|Twitter).
• Ten reasons to attend SQLBits X - That is apart from the opportunity to meet yours truly of course Here’s
  Simon Sabin (Blog|Twitter) with the details.

UK SQL Server Upcoming Events

Misc Technology Posts

Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Several weeks into January already then and it’s great to see that the SQL community is clearly back into the swing of things following the holidays, delivering a large variety of SQL content for your weekend reading pleasure. Forget SOPA, this week we’ve got PASS scandal, High Availability discussions, Lying DBAs, T-SQL Tips, XML Tricks, Query Plan insights and much more….

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

• Is Your DBA Lying To You? – If you’re not sure, then yes. If you’re convinced their not then they clearly are. Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) here with the truth of it.
• Availability, Data Locality, and Peer-to-Peer Replication – Architectural discussions from Jeremiah Peschka (Blog|Twitter).
• SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers – Book Review – Here with his review of the latest book offering from Pinal Dave (Blog|Twitter), it’s  Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter).
• Including Missing Values in Data Ranges Without a Lookup Table – Why use the “stock answer” when there might be a better way. Robert L. Davis(Blog|Twitter) here with a T-SQL/reporting tip.
• Dynamic Seeks and Hidden Implicit Conversions – Query Plan Internals and insights from Paul White (Blog|Twitter).
• Let’s Get Recursive! – An excellent T-SQL walk-through of CTEs, courtesy of Matt Velic (Blog|Twitter).
• Great SQL Server Debates: Buffer Cache Hit Ratio – In this excellent article over on Simple-Talk, Jonathan Kehayias (Blog|Twitter) explains exactly why the Buffer Cache Hit Ratio metric is just not as useful as you think it is.
• Excluding nodes from XML data before returning from SQL Server – A handy coding tip from Adrian Hills (Blog|Twitter).
• Is the problem with PASS, the community? – A fresh perspective on the matter then from Simon Sabin (Blog|Twitter).
• Conor vs. SQL Azure Resource Usage – Learn how you can gain more insight into your SQLAzure solutions resource utilization from Connor Cunningham (Blog).
• Backups and Disk Space – Are you accounting for all the storage that you really need for those database backups? Erin Stellato (Blog|Twitter) with an important reminder.
• Does filing bugs on Microsoft Connect for SQL Server work? – A lot of community folks submit their bugs and feature suggestions for the product via Connect but just how effective is it? Sharing his thoughts, Jonathan Kehayias (Blog|Twitter).

UK SQL Server Upcoming Events

Misc Technology Posts

This post is part of the community blogging event #meme15 created by Jason Strate (Blog|Twitter), designed to encourage sql bloggers to write about blogging a.k.a Meta Blogging and Social Media. Why not join in and share your story?

Your relationship with Twitter is personal and unique to you. It can be many different things to so many different people. It really is what you make of it.

Some people just don’t get what all the fuss is about. They just can’t see the value in it for them. That’s because they themselves have yet to give anything to the community. They’re just looking to see what they can take from it and are probably asking themselves “What can Twitter do for me?”. If you give nothing, you can expect nothing in return.

For those that are genuinely open to what Twitter can be and are prepared to give a little of themselves at the same time, good for you, I think you’ll find just what it is that you are looking for.

Here are some of things that Twitter is to me:

• A way to connect with people, to build new and exciting relationships.
• A hive mind of learning, “the collective”. The processing power of many are able to work, collaborate and share thoughts on the same subject or problem. (#SQLHelp)
• What’s the most talked about thing in the world, your town, your community right now? You can keep your finger on the pulse at whatever scale you choose using Trending topics.
• An opportunity to be a part of communities that can be both niche and global.
• A platform to share, to help others to learn and grow.
• The ability to connect with these communities from almost anywhere in the world and at any time.

Not sure how to get started using Twitter? Fellow SQL Server Data Professional and prolific blogger Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter) wrote an entire eBook(The Simple Twitter Book) on the subject that you may want to check out.

I’d love to hear about your thoughts and views on Twitter. What is Twitter for you?

Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

Your first encounter with it may have been quite subtle. Perhaps you were surprised by the generosity and willingness with which help can be found? Maybe it was that first SQL Saturday you attended? However you first experienced the power of the community, one thing is for sure and that is the spark which it ignites within you. You felt the buzz, experienced the camaraderie and could taste that there was more, a whole lot more, to this sql stuff. Something great and you wanted a slice of the action.

For those new to the event, #mememonday is the community creation of Thomas LaRock (Blog|Twitter), the driving force of which is to encourage the SQL community to put virtual pen to paper. This months theme “What do you want to do for your #sqlfamily in 2012?”

Successful communities are about relationships. All good relationships need a healthy balance of give and take in order to really flourish. Taking from the community is the easy bit! Maybe you attended a free webinar or the free community day at SQLBits where all the speakers generously give their expertise and time solely for your benefit. Maybe you read a blog post that showed you how to resolve your issue, or perhaps a flurry of experts promptly answered your query on Twitter(#SQLHELP). I bet if you think about it, you’ve probably taken quite a bit from the community. I know I sure have.

Here’s what I will be doing to give back to our #sqlfamily, what I will do for you in 2012.

• Reply to ALL of your emails – I will continue to reply to all of your emails. To answer your queries and to provide the advice you seek. Although I can’t vouch for the quality of said advice I will always give you my genuine and honest opinion. Sometimes, with your permission of course, I share your emails and my replies to them here on the blog.
• Say Thank You More – I endeavour to show gratitude, to appreciate and to thank my fellow family members more. It requires such a tiny amount of effort to say thank you to a forum reply, in a blog post comment or a to send a quick email note but it means such a great deal more to it’s recipient.
• Blog SQL Differently – Blogging about SQL Server often means content with a technical focus. It does not always have to be though! There’s so much more than “T-SQL Tips” and “How To” blog posts. I promise to continue to Blog, to share my honest thoughts and opinions with our family. To continue to attack topics that others have yet to challenge. To look at things differently and to share content that is fresh, unique and different.
• Be A Forum Champion – One of my favourite ways to share with our #sqlfamily is through the various sql forums, particularly MSDN and Stackoverflow. To be a trusted voice that takes pride in not only answering your questions but doing so in polite and courteous fashion. Forum etiquette has been loitering around in the dumps of late in my view(maybe a post is needed on this) and the best way to clean it up is to lead by example, to champion the cause.

The very best thing about our #sqlfamily is that it keeps on giving. Let’s make sure it stays that way! What do you want to do for your #sqlfamily in 2012?

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Don’t miss out on your weekly fix of SQL Server Links, community news and technology banter. Subscribe to the Blog Feed now to ensure you catch all posts. You can also receive posts via Email.

Here’s your weekly roundup of SQL Server Blog Posts, News and Techie Stuff. Enjoy!

Your customers are keen to get straight back to business immediately and get the year off to the best possible start, meaning your skills and services will be in high demand. To help ensure you get your year off to a fantastic start take a look at some of these:

• 10 Things Every DBA Should Do
• The Best DBAs Automate Everything!
• 5 Days to Outstanding DBA Customer Service
• Stop Asking and Start Making Decisions Today
• Why Every DBA Needs a Buddy
• Outstanding DBAs Make Relationships a Priority

For blog authors the end of one year and the beginning of another provides the opportunity for review of what worked and what didn’t. It’s always interesting to see which posts proved the most popular, surprisingly often not what we expect to do well. In a twisted sense of irony it’s often those posts that we blog authors think are great pieces of writing that often tend to sink like lead balloons. Thankfully we are occasionally saved by the Google traffic gods and the magical content that just continues to pull in the traffic year after year, what bloggers worship and call Pillar Content. On to the content already then…….

Here’s what you enjoyed reading the most from the blog in 2011:

1. The Database Administrators Primary Responsibility
2. SQL Server Memory Configuration, Determining MemToLeave Settings
3. Performing fast SQL Server delete operations
4. The SQL Server Buffer Pool and Buffer Cache Hit Ratio
5. Why you should be using the FULL Recovery Model
6. How to Become a SQL Server DBA
7. Top 10 Junior DBA Interview Tips
8. 10 Things Every DBA Should Do
9. How to identify the most costly SQL Server queries using DMV’s
10. My Guide to Passing MCTS Exam 70-432

The most enjoyable part of the whole blogging gig is being able to share the awesomeness of SQL community with all of you folks reading this right now. You honestly really are what makes our community a great thing to be a part of. This year I hope to meet many more of you in person.

Thank you and I wish you the very best for the New Year!