Category Archives: DBA

In The Beginning

Posted on October 1, 2014 by paulwinans

Like everyone with taste, I love Dune. I’ve read it countless times and I am not exaggerating. Dune, like all literature, conveys philosophy; for example, one well known quote from Dune is: “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care … Continue reading →

Posted in DBA, Leadership, Metrics | Leave a comment

Leadership

Posted on September 20, 2014 by paulwinans

The criteria for being a good leader, lots written about that! A good leader enables the group to make a decision thus gaining the insights of many. People won’t speak unless they feel safe and supported. Ideas need to be properly … Continue reading →

Posted in DBA, Leadership, Metrics | 2 Comments

The Code Review

Posted on July 9, 2014 by paulwinans

At work, some years ago, I was able to implement a dba code review and practice deployment requirement for every Change Request. (A Change Request documents the proper steps have been taken so that a deployment has a good chance of success.) This was … Continue reading →

Posted in DBA, SQL | 2 Comments

Updating Statistics

Posted on June 6, 2014 by paulwinans

Statistics and sql server. When people ask me what are statistics I answer with a Google maps analogy: while we know the roads are there, the traffic changes and, therefore, in the same way we know it is best to patiently … Continue reading →

Posted in Configuration, DBA, SQL | 2 Comments

SQL Licensing and the Cluster

Posted on March 8, 2014 by paulwinans

We licence our servers by core as we are all Enterprise edition. This choice is determined by the memory requirements of some systems not being met by Standard edition, to be able to mirror (for 2008 R2 and high performance for … Continue reading →

Posted in DBA | 2 Comments

Rehearsals = Good

Posted on January 8, 2014 by paulwinans

I worked construction during high school and college summers and holidays. The people I met were a ton of fun and had great stories. The people who’d been incarcerated, they had the best. My move from construction to computers included … Continue reading →

Posted in DBA | Leave a comment

Execute As

Posted on December 17, 2013 by paulwinans

We all want to have our databases not owned by an individual. Especially the model database. We can run alter authorization on database::<<db name>> to sa after the fact, but why make a problem? An easy way to avoid this … Continue reading →

Posted in Configuration, DBA, SQL | Leave a comment

Educating Your Developers

Posted on October 19, 2013 by paulwinans

Great departments have great people. No kidding! How do we end up with quality developers? Time has shown it we can’t hire the best for every position and, inevitably, something will come up which will require growth, whether personal or professional, … Continue reading →

Posted in DBA, Leadership, SQL | Leave a comment

Hard Coded Values

Posted on April 12, 2013 by paulwinans

Often we see code with business logic in the form of hard coded values. For example, a long, comma separated IN statement which lists out a category. These comma delimited lists are of course data duplication, nothing anyone wants. It would be worth … Continue reading →

Posted in DBA, SQL | 2 Comments

Performance Tuning from a High Level

Posted on March 7, 2013 by paulwinans

We had a report which ran “forever”. Seriously it was a long time. After restoring production backups on to a test instance, I ran the same sql. Not good. I could have grown the coconuts whose water I was drinking. … Continue reading →

Posted in DBA, SQL | Leave a comment