Author Archives: SQLGator
Resume Updates
This week, I updated my resume in anticipation of the possible reduction in force. Not only did I update it, but I removed a lot of old technologies and went with a more streamlined resume. My previous resume was more like Curriculum Vitae format with five pages of details and now is down to a two page overview resume.
Within a day, I had four phone calls. Moral of the story: the format, style, and keywords can make a huge difference in helping you formulate a strategic plan for your next position. This is essential to maximizing your opportunities. I hope this helps so you on your journey. Enjoy.
SQL Formatting Tip
Last night was the first meeting for the new Tampa side SQL Server User Group and the turnout was great. I gave my first user group presentation and I was a little more nervous than the last time I gave this presentation. At this point, I am going to attribute that to the fact that I have to see this group every month where as in Pensacola I do not. But I am moving closer to completing my goals for the year and that is a great thing. To be a great speaker, obviously you have to practice as a speaker, seems simple enough.
Moving forward, I wanted to pass along a great tip last night from Pam Shaw (blog|twitter), our fearless leader. She shared a site with us called Instant SQL Formatter that provides automatic formatting and coloring of many different flavors of coding including SQL Server and Oracle. It is a pretty nifty utility especially with all of the available formatting options. Check it out and thanks Pam!
New Tampa User Group Meeting Tonight, Be There!
Tonight will be the first meeting of the new Tampa Side SQL User Group Meeting. The regular Tampa Bay SQL User Group meets in Clearwater on the third Thursday of every month. However, many people on the other side of the bay have a hard time attending because of traffic and geography until now. We will be meeting from 6:30 pm until 8:30 pm at the Computer Associates headquarters near I-75 and Martin Luther King Boulevard (see the address below). Please RSVP so that it gives the sponsor an idea of how much food to bring.
I am humbled to be the first speaker to present for the new group so come out and see my Seven Deadly Sins of the SQL Server DBA presentation that I gave at the Pensacola SQL Saturday last month. I look forward to seeing you there tonight! Enjoy!
Computer Associates
10210 Highland Manor Dr, Suite 300 (Room 302)
Tampa, Florida 33610
Master Maintenance Plan, Part One
For the last two days, in between other tasks, I have been kicking around ideas to organize or reorganize scheduled jobs and maintenance plans into a grander scheme solution that sends me ONE e-mail a day. Sounds like a minor operation, but I have 32 SQL servers including four clusters. Currently, many of the 300 databases send me nightly e-mails to let me know whether the individual operations succeeded or failed. There are still some maintenance plans that I have not replaced yet. I have also implemented Ola Hallengren’s backup solution on many of the servers which greatly reduced the number of e-mails that I receive. The plan is to install that solution on every server. This solution has saved me hours upon hours of work, check it out if you have not already.
Sometime ago, I wrote or found a script (no, I cannot remember) that would send me an e-mail letting me know the backup type and date/time of the last backup. So here we are, and I am trying to take this to another level by exploring solutions to greatly reduce e-mail traffic and reduce the amount of time it takes me to assess my server’s overnight maintenance thus allowing me to spend more time being proactive. With all that being said, I found the following article, Use PowerShell to Report SQL Server Backup Status, written on the Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog.
As this plan develops, I will post new blog posts. Enjoy or let me know how you handle it. Let’s share ideas!
PASS Summit, Why Not?
Having my resume in several places, I receive solicitations from recruiters, LinkedIn, monster.com, etc. One common thread to all of these communiques? Not one of them says that they will send me to the PASS Summit. Why not?
If they are serious about their SQL Server position and finding a professional, as evidenced by their stringent requirements then why wouldn’t they want to help ensure that the DBA has the proper training necessary to complete the requested tasks?
You’ve seen the SQL Server DBA stringent requirements before:
- Must have a Bachelor’s degree and ten years experience in the information technology field, prefer Ph.D. or Brent Ozar.
- Must have five years experience with SQL Server 2012 and ten years with SQL Server 2007.
- Must have expert-level knowledge of SSIS, SSRS, SSMS, clustering, business intelligence, power-pivot, backup/recovery, mirroring, log-shipping, performance tuning, CLR, T-SQL, and a host of others that we will ask you about in the interview but neglected to list in the initial advertisement.
- It would be beneficial if you also had an expert-level knowledge of Oracle as we have one linked server, but not essential.
Seriously, why don’t the listings say that in order to show you how serious we are about your development, we are including a yearly commitment to sending you the PASS Summit? This is a fundamental change I would like to see happen in my lifetime. If they can weed you out based on their requirements, then why can’t we weed them out from the beginning? Something to ponder. Enjoy!
Database Tracking
This morning one of our VMWare clusters went down when our SAN guys inadvertently unplugged the wrong storage array. Oops! We had to reboot some of our development and test servers including my SQL Servers. No big deal, this happens from time to time.
Good manners dictate that I notify the effected application administrators so they don’t panic seeing their connections drop. This is a pretty normal procedure. In my previous positions I had at the most five servers and I knew every database and who it belonged to. However, in this environment, I have almost 300 databases and knowing what they go to and who to contact is handled by a spreadsheet that was created before I started. Seems like there should be a better way to track this and to notify me when new databases are created. How are you handling this task?
Sunday Funday
Today’s installment of Sunday Funday brings you a great little drawing with T-SQL exercise by Roji P. Thomas. Enjoy!
Never Heard of SQL Saturday?
Karla Landrum (twitter|blog), Community Evangelist for SQL PASS, made the comment this morning on Twitter that there are many people out there in the SQL community who still have not heard about SQL Saturday, the free training event that is taking the world by storm at a location near you every Saturday of the year.
This does not shock me even though I have been in the know for a while now because I was once that guy who did his job and did not know much about PASS or SQL Saturday. There was a point where I had belonged to professional associations and decided that annual fees with little to no interaction was no longer for me. Thus, when I started focusing on SQL Server several years ago, I did not seek out any professional associations for the simple fact that I had associated them with an annual fee for a nice little add-on to my resume. I had belonged to the HTML Writer’s Guild, the International Webmasters Association, and the Capital PC User Group in Washington, D.C. I joined that group and then could never make the meetings because of my work schedule, but it looked great on my resume. There were a few other groups, but I honestly cannot remember them now.
This is not a knock on these groups as I am sure that they are wonderful groups for some people, but that to me was what these professional associations were. SQL PASS is so much more and then some. I honestly wished someone had told me about it years ago. So make it your mission today to tell someone about PASS. They may already know, they may not. Do them a favor and spread the word. Enjoy!
Fun With SSMS
Recently I was showing a friend a query in SSMS, cause that’s what geeks do. I typed ‘SELECT’ and then dragged the columns over to the query window. He said “whoa, how did you do that?” Which reminded me that we all learn little things that we assume everyone else knows but apparently not everyone knows them all. That is why I love blogging, because I can share and when I read your blog I can learn what you share. Maybe I know, maybe I do not. The SQL community prospers either way.
So here is the tip: If you grab the ‘Columns’ folder underneath the table in SSMS and drag it across to the query window, then all of the column names are listed which is helpful when you do not want to type 40 of the 50 columns that you want for a particular query. It is a nice little trick, but I wish it would just drag a handful or that it would insert brackets in there but beggers can’t be choosers. Or can they? Enjoy!
First UG Presentation Scheduled
It is with great excitement that I announce that next Thursday night, July 26th, I will be presenting my Seven Deadly Sins of the Database Administrator at the first user group meeting for the second (actually third if you count BI) Tampa user group. Confused? Don’t be. The Tampa Bay SQL Server User Group meetings are actually held in Clearwater (also known as across the bay) which makes them difficult to attend for professionals who work on the Tampa side of the bay. Therefore, we have received approval from PASS to add a second group to the area and its first meeting will be next Thursday. Now you are up to speed, so let’s proceed.
This is the same presentation that I presented at the Pensacola SQL Saturday last month, but I will try to extend it out to 15 minutes. In other words I will speak slower and add more ‘ums’ in there. Just kidding, I hope.
I will however do something different this time. Drum roll please. I am going to give this presentation from my iPad using the Keynote application and the new VGA out adapter that I ordered. Why you ask, because I am a geek and there is no real demo in this presentation. I will update you all after the presentation so stay tuned. Enjoy.
SQL Swampland 