DBA Tunnel Vision

One of the things hammered into you in Firefighting training, Law Enforcement training, defensive gun use training and many other forms of training is “Do not develop tunnel vision.” There is a reason they emphasize this concept so much, too. Lot of folks get killed each year by tunnel vision. Do you think this phenomenon doesn’t … Read more

SQL University – Troubleshooting Week

I was about to write another bunch of comments on why I think troubleshooting skills are important. I’ve changed my mind – I’ve done that before. So let’s start SQL University Troubleshooting week off with a couple reminders from past posts that say what I wanted to say this week already. If You Can’t Troubleshoot … Read more

Hey Software Vendors – Get a Clue!

Psst. Hey Vendor – DBAs are secretly plotting against you! We hate what your products do to our environments. Sometimes we even work to get you replaced by someone else who makes a product in the same space but is “DBA-Approved”… (Quick Edit March of 2021). In the time since writing this post, I’ve grown … Read more

Got SQL Server Questions?

A Great Idea – #SQLHelp hashtag on Twitter I was following a conversation today between Brent Ozar, who is @BrentO on twitter and Aaron Nelson, who is @SQLVariant on twitter. A great idea was discussed: A twitter hashtag that, as Jorge Segarra (or @SQLChicken on twitter) describes it in his blog post, can act like … Read more

A Picture That Says, “Don’t Shrink!” (and other things…)

So I wrote a lot of posts around shrinking (Here, here, here). Some of my posts were turned into a wiki article on SQLServerPedia. I thought I was done posting about this but one more. I talked about why we shouldn’t do it on a regular basis. Why it should really be reserved for use … Read more