July 21, 2008 at 11:44 am
Jeff Moden's Three Rules of DBA's.
I, DBA?
July 21, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I liked "DBAs of Dawn" better.
----------------------------------------------------The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood... Theodore RooseveltThe Scary DBAAuthor of: SQL Server 2017 Query Performance Tuning, 5th Edition and SQL Server Execution Plans, 3rd EditionProduct Evangelist for Red Gate Software
July 21, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Wayne West (7/21/2008)
Jeff Moden (7/21/2008)
[font="Arial Black"]Jeff Moden's Three Rules of DBA's.[/font]1. A DBA may not injure data or performance of the data or, through inaction, allow data or performance of the data to come to harm.
2. A DBA must obey orders given to it by "Users", except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A DBA must protect "Users" existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First Law.
Shouldn't the third law be in conflict with the second law rather than the first, especially since the second cannot be in conflict with the first? I know I've had to protect users from themselves. (and you should standardize between rules and laws, looks like you have an integrity violation on your data set there :hehe: )
Heh... it took Asimov a long time to come up with those rules... I'm still fine tuning... I might just simplify them to "The DBA is always right." 😛
--Jeff Moden
July 21, 2008 at 4:09 pm
cyndi.horn (7/21/2008)
Jeff Moden's Three Rules of DBA's.I, DBA?
Or, maybe get a little Edgar Rice Burroughs into it... "Ugh... Me DBA... you user!" 😛
--Jeff Moden
July 21, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Jeff Moden (7/21/2008)
... I might just simplify them to "The DBA is always right." 😛
I think this is what you might be looking for:
Rule 1: The DBA is always right.
Rule 2: When the DBA is wrong, refer to Rule #1.
It will take care of most situations, and defenestration can handle the rest. 😀
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
July 21, 2008 at 6:09 pm
hmm...must summon the Chi for some skills today.
Just walked into a new gig today, and let's just say the first procedure they wanted me to "look at" (not to tune - to get me acquainted with the new system) is ranking up there with some classic gems. Let's just say I had hoped to leave the dastardly four-letter word behind once I stopped coding in classic BASIC....(hint - starts with a G. Yeah, really - that one).
Not doing any harm to the data, that I think I can handle. There might be some cursing involved in the mean time though.....
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
July 21, 2008 at 6:21 pm
I'm walking into a new job similar to that on Monday...
--Jeff Moden
July 21, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Jeff Moden (7/21/2008)
I'm walking into a new job similar to that on Monday...
I keep trying to look at the bright side. The ETL is process some 10,000 records through 7 cursors in about 2H 45M, so I think it's fair to say - there's room for improvement...:)
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
July 22, 2008 at 3:10 am
Been on holiday, so apologies for the late post. Good editorial, and like the comments on the thread. However, as is my wont, I have a comment or two since I think there's an area that's been missed.
If my boss asked me to work on my "soft" skills, I'd question his managerial abilities. It's a bit like saying, "go learn how to be ruthless" or "try to find out how to compose a piece of music". Few people really know which are their weak "soft skills" areas, and many will think they're strong in certain areas where their colleagues would hold a different opinion. IMHO, the key to properly targeting any soft skills training is to know the weak points, and that means the manager is better placed than the recipient to decide which training is appropriate. Of course, it might be a challenge to the manager's soft skills to convince their subordinate that such training is necessary.......
Semper in excretia, sumus solum profundum variat
July 22, 2008 at 3:27 am
Also been on holiday, if racing a dinghy on a windy day can be called holiday - it's harder work than the 9 to 5.
Anyway our comapny has a contract with DBLearning to provide courses which are mainly soft skills including Assertiveness for Women, Communication Skills etc. some are on-line, some residential. All useful.
July 22, 2008 at 6:12 am
Matt Miller (7/21/2008)
Jeff Moden (7/21/2008)
I'm walking into a new job similar to that on Monday...I keep trying to look at the bright side. The ETL is process some 10,000 records through 7 cursors in about 2H 45M, so I think it's fair to say - there's room for improvement...:)
Oh heck yeah... I can see you getting it down to a second or two. Maybe 3 if the validation is a real bear.
I was informed during my interview with the new company that their "Import Flow" starts with a DTS job, the a Perl Job, then another DTS job... and that's just to get the data into the database. Rumor has it that there are some other processes involved and then they do an export so solve a bit of one way replication.
The system is about a good as a six year old "desktop server", has only 1 hard disk, and the backups are to the same hard disk. I couldn't find out how big their hard disk is but they have no recovery plans if the machine quits or the hard disk is damaged. It'll be the smallest system I've had to work on (my desktop is about the same size except I have two disks :P). Most DBA's have to support many servers... I get to support just one or two. They really want me for my high speed brute force ETL techniques, writing new code, and performance tuning of the old cursor ridden code... you just know those will be rewrites.
--Jeff Moden
September 8, 2008 at 10:16 am
Soft skills are for people that are soft in the head or a bunch of weak, spineless cowards. We as a society have reduced conversation to being politically correct, water down, lukewarm platitudes. Did you get your opinions from the talk heads last evening at 6 p.m.? Mindless automatons!
September 8, 2008 at 11:46 am
I think you're kidding, and I hope so. Soft Skills are important. Even in the military, where it's a top-down, no-nonsense, do what I say attitude, soft skills are needed to motivate and get increased efforts out of people.
I'd say that leaders have incredible soft skills, getting people to follow them along most any path.
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September 8, 2008 at 12:04 pm
True, but I do take exception to companies that make this too much of a priority. The golden rule is taught from birth, "treat others as you desire to be treated". I shouldn't need to spend time and resources. Our society has lost some fundamental respect for each other. Using cell phones around others, playing music in the car so loud it can be heard on Pluto are just a few examples. I have to blame my generation for starting it, the ME generation! Can we take it back and try again, halt program, recode (add emphases to golden rule), compile, link, execute.
September 8, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Robert Heinlein once wrote that a sure sign of the decline of a society is a loss of manners. I think we started seeing that a long time ago.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
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