Author Archives: SQLGator
RIF, the Most Evil Three Letters Today
RIF. Reduction in Force sounds much better to the palette when you say it as RIF, then you do not have to attach guilt or any form of emotional attachment to the word. It is a kinder, gentler word to most, but if you ask me it is pure evil. He Who Must Not Be Named evil, that’s right Voldemort evil.
I have been through it eight times now in the last seven years and survived five times. That’s a pretty good winning percentage, but it is not a good situation to be in for anyone involved. The stress, anxiety, and worry are not healthy for anyone. I came out of the situations with a smile on my face and with a positive attitude, but it still can be a painful situation for your family especially. I hope that you never have to go through it. Enjoy.
Common Request from Vendor
These days it seems that I am getting more and more requests like this one:
Can you please backup XYZ database and then run the following command, UPDATE XYZtable.column SET FIELD=’somevalue’ WHERE KeyField = ‘value’?
Mind you, that XYZ database is a production database with a legitimate development and/or acceptance counterpart depending upon the importance of the data. Here is my usual response:
Sure. I would be happy to run that for you in the DEVELOPMENT environment. <Pause> What do you mean production is down and this needs to go straight to production? <Pause> So who changed this value to cause your application to go down? <Pause> The vendor says this happens all the time with the application? And this is the fix?
Unfortunately, these types of requests seem to be more common place when dealing with vendor databases, at lease in my environment. Having been a developer in a previous lifetime, this really bothers me. We called that a patch, where the vendor fixes the application to stop causing the problem especially when data was involved. Fix the problem, not the symptoms people. Enjoy!
AD Accounts Are Great, But…
Using Windows Authentication for your database is a great best practice to follow. However, one caveat to remember as one of my administrators found out today. Do not use that account as a login if it is also the account you use for your database.
We setup an AD account for his database, that part is great. He thought that was also the account to use as his application administrative account. Not a good idea because when he fat fingered the password this morning a few times, as people tend to do on Monday mornings when their coffee hasn’t fully kicked in, he locked out his application as well as the database sending 150 alert messages all over the department. This set off a chain reaction where he rebooted his server after unlocked the account and proceeded to call me and tell me that SQL was down and sounded the sky is falling alarm. He overreacted essentially.
When I figured out what he did, I explained the situation and told him that he needed another AD account for his application or I could setup another one for his database. He said he installed his application under that account and cannot change either one. Not the best scenario, but every time you fat finger the account you will bring the world down upon you. Your choice. He chose the road well traveled unfortunately. Enjoy!
Ponderings
While attending a viewing tonight for my wife’s cousin, I was once again reminded that life is too short to be unhappy. Live your life to the fullest and savor every minutes. Hug your family, call your friends, and spend time with them all.
Life is precious, it is a gift, do not squander it away. You have heard all of this before, but I am here to remind you that time waits for no man! Enjoy!
Saturday SQL Schoolhouse
SQL Schoolhouse!
Today’s installment of the Saturday SQL Schoolhouse is brought to you by the fine folks over at Idera Software. They offer free webcasts broadcast usually monthly with some of the biggest names in SQL Server. Better yet, is that all of those are archived here for your viewing and learning pleasure.
Check out this month’s webcast, recorded earlier this week by my friend Robert Davis (blog|twitter). In addition, they also have SharePoint and PowerShell webcasts for your learning goodness. Enjoy!
Changing the Change Management
Personally, I am not a big fan of useless processes or processes for the sake of having a process. Recently we underwent an audit and of course some processes have to change. I get that, I really do. They make suggestions for improvement, we implement those changes and everything is better. Hopefully.
Since that point our change management process has been evolving on a daily basis. I have asked for a written process and training on a few occasions since I have been here a little over a year ago. The change management target has been in flux long before I got here and my supervisor does his best to try to keep our department in line with the processes but across the board it is going in many different directions. The exact process really depends upon who you ask. This is a problem.
Ironically enough, the change management software was being changed on a weekly basis without any change management tickets. In other words, the change manager was not willing to use his own process for his realm of responsibility. That was another bad reflection upon the process.
I appreciate change management. What I do not appreciate is the process taking longer than the change with numerous fields to capture data. If I reboot a server, it takes two minutes for the change and ten minutes for the paperwork needed to do so. That is a bad process. Who watches the watchmen, I mean the change managers? Enjoy!
Color Coding SSMS
Finally got around to color coding my SQL Server Management Studio (2008) on my desktop today, which is a great feature if you haven’t set it up already. Essentially it changes the color at the bottom of your query window which is usually a light yellow. Why bother?
Well for me I set my production boxes to red, acceptance boxes to yellow, and development boxes to green to remind my brain whether it is safe to make changes to the environment. Once you have a few query windows open, you tend to forget to which environment that window belongs to. This is not foolproof, but it is a handy reminder to be mindful of your environment.
Not sure how to set it up?
Well using the registered servers feature, add your server and select the properties. Then choose the connection properties tab and select the ‘use custom color’ option and then press select to choose your color. Easy and remember to restart SSMS for this to take effect. Enjoy.
Money, My Two Cents
For some unknown reason, I have seen many articles and blogs lately regarding money. Maybe its my subconscious, I don’t know. Here are a couple of things that I have learned over the years.
First of all, money does buy happiness, to some degree. If you are not a happy person, then chances are whether you have money or not will not matter. I used to tell people who only rich people said that money cannot buy happiness and to some degree that is true because when you have money you can buy a jet ski. Have you ever seen anyone unhappy on a jet ski. I didn’t think so. Unless you just ran out of gas.
Don’t get me wrong, there are people who win the lottery everyday and they are miserable and then they eventually go broke. Why? Because they thought money would bring them happiness. It doesn’t work that way. Money only buys you the opportunity to be happy, it is up to you to make it happen.
Now for the elephant in the room, making more money in your job. A pay increase can only go so far to making you happy especially when the environment is toxic. However, I have found that the opposite is also true. When the market continues to move upward and your pay remains stagnant, it is only a matter of time before you will feel undervalued. There are people who stay for other reasons, obviously, but there will be a value to other intangibles and once that threshold is met, most people will leave for greener pastures.
I would think that if a company was unwilling to pay you the market value for your services, then you probably will not be happy in general for an extended period of time. I also understand that with some companies, there is no amount of money that will make you happy because there are too many other problems to compensate for the increase in pay. What do you think?
Presentation Ponderings
After my first presentation at SQL Saturday Pensacola, I am ready to do another and need to submit for SQL Saturday Orlando later this month. All of that is not a problem, I just don’t know if I should do what I did in Pensacola and expand on it because the audience seemed to enjoy it or forge a new path. I have good arguments for both, maybe I will submit both and see which one gets picked, if they get picked, of course. I have three weeks to decide, but I should not wait until the last minute.
The presentation that I did in Pensacola was the Seven Deadly Sins of the SQL Server DBA. The other one I am thinking about doing is just a straight up best practices install guide. I am very passionate about best practices and there are so many people who I’ve spoken with said that they wish they had known some of the best practices at the time of their install instead of correcting them after the fact. It also may help that I was asked to give the Seven Deadly Sins at the next Tampa Bay user group meeting this month, so we will see how that goes, maybe it was a one-hit wonder and the decision will be made for me? What do you think?
SQLChicken’s New Tool
Preparing to blog, I saw a new blog post by Jorge Segarra (blog | twitter) that will identify and alert you when you have long-running alert jobs. This is something that I have had on my list to sit down and write when I found some extra time (translation: never going to happen any time soon). I was so excited, I thought I would pass it on to you before I even played with it myself. The life of a DBA sometimes does include doing the happy dance when you see something totally cool. Enjoy!
SQL Swampland 