I was tagged by Gail Shaw to post two big mistakes made during my professional career. The only challenge here was to narrow the list down to two 🙂 The first one is very easy. During my early days working with SQL Server, I wore a lot of hats, including that of web developer. One of my first major web projects was…
I’ve read a number of responses from Chris Shaw’s first DBA networking quiz. I missed out on the first one, but I have been tagged by Grant Fritchey for the second round. The Questions for this quiz… What are the largest challenges that you have faced in your career and how did you overcome those? 1) The first one of these, I still…
DBA, database developer, analyst, SQL grunt, or whatever your title may be, there is no question that your role will be evolving in the next few years. I read a couple of posts from Jason Massie about the Death of the DBA (part 1 and part 2) earlier today, in which he predicts a diminishing market for database administrators, and SQL DBAs…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of value. Recently, a colleague of mine tendered his resignation quite unexpectedly and at a very inconvenient time, just before the consummation of a 2-year software implementation and data conversion project. Citing health and family concerns, he decided that the value he received from his work was disproportionately low compared to…
It seems that I keep inheriting old systems that provide a singular, albeit mission critical, function to their owners. In the majority of these cases, I have encountered numerous small applications that were designed to run in a standalone environment to solve a very narrow problem or set of problems. The person who supports the application – which is very…
I’ve come to learn that there are some really flaky systems out there. Not just a few quirks here and there, but significant problems that someone should have caught. For example, I spent some time earlier this week consolidating two SQL Server machines into one. Through this process, I had to evaluate the vendor app that interfaced with one of…
After almost a year of investigation, market analysis, and contemplation, I have decided to shift from Perl/PHP/MySQL to a Microsoft ASP.NET/ADO.NET architecture, focusing on C# development. This change will affect my current college enrollment, career goals, and all of my websites I currently own and/or manage. Why, after investing so much time in learning the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/Perl/PHP) platform, would I…