T-SQL Tuesday #32 Round Up

T-SQL Tuesday

Two weeks ago I put out a call for T-SQL Tuesday posts, and a huge thank you to those who responded!  It was an honor to have so many people participate – especially many new people that I haven’t met yet – and as I expected, I loved hearing about what everyone did.  I also liked how some people included their entire day, some people went into detail about a problem they solved or something they learned, and others just detailed a specific part about their day.  Every post was unique, just as each person’s job is unique.  I’m hoping that I have every post in my list below, but if I missed anyone, please let me know so I can come back and update this post.

Also, in typical T-SQL Tuesday summary format, I’m listing every blogger’s name which has the link to their post.  I’m including a couple sentences about each post, and for the blogger, that sometimes feels like very little after the significant post that’s been written.  I get that, but I want you, beloved reader, to go read each blogger’s post if you haven’t already.  And again, to every blogger who wrote a post, I sincerely thank you for your time and effort.  I know it took time not only to write the post, but to track your day and figure out how to frame it.  I value the individuality shown in each post – they were a lot of fun to read.

Nick Haslam – Nick is either a BI Consultant and Data Warehousing Consultant – it depends on the task at hand – and lives in the UK (I figured this out from a picture where he’s driving on the right side of the car).  Nick got to work on an ETL project and do some performance troubleshooting during his day, and he included a shout out to Adam Machanic’s WhoIsActive script.  Two thousand bonus points to Nick.

Jes Borland – My dear friend Jes is living the dream as a Consultant with Brent Ozar PLF.  I love that she included a picture of her home office in the post (it’s very organized).  Jes did a lot during the day, and the three hour block at the beginning was noteworthy.  That was probably a three hour session where she was engaged the entire time and going 100 miles an hour.  I also liked that Jes had specific breaks to catch up on email and read blogs.

Ted Krueger – Ted is another dear friend, and he’s also consultant.  Ted also doesn’t sleep.  Ted gets a lot done in a day.  He described replication issues, some coding, and dabbled in some ETL.  And wrote blogs.  Ted also pointed out how much he interacted with his family throughout the day; I liked seeing that.  Ted also watches a fair bit of Law and Order, and for what it’s worth, Ted is one of the most humble people I know.

Gil Rowley – Gil is a DBA and when I read his post on Tuesday, I ended it thinking, “Seriously?”  Basically, Gil was done with his “work” for the day at 9:30 AM.  And then I read this post of Gil’s, and I am quite happy to congratulate him on his new job!  I can’t wait to hear about how busy you are 🙂  However, Gil loses one million points for having nothing to do, and he has to re-do this post in six months.

Ameena Lalani – Ameena is a DBA and had a busy day with SQL Server upgrades, patches and all sorts of server issues.  Ameena has to communicate with many different teams, and not only keep the Production databases running, but also work with developers and manage their environments.  Ameena gets 3,234 bonus points for attending a webinar on SQL Server 2012 Availability Groups.

Joey D’Antoni – So Joey is another great friend and his title is Principal Architect-SQL Server.  Whenever I hear Architect I think of buildings, so I assume that Joey builds SQL Server environments.  This is kind of true.  He does a lot of other stuff (and sometimes answers my Oracle questions) but often he’s in meetings – as detailed in his post.  Joey gets 1,625 bonus points for biking before work, but loses 902 for the unhealthy lunch he had.  Oh, but then he gets 23,491 more points for riding again at night.

Bob Pusateri – Bob is a DBA in the Chicago area and I have to say that I always enjoy reading his posts.  This was no exception, though I was shocked to see how much of his day was spent traveling to and from work.  Bob was awake at 4:45 AM.  In the morning!  Also, Bob earns 323,423,983 bonus points for biking to work, doing a test restore of backup, watching a webcast, mentioning Plan Explorer, and for including the line, “Put on pants”.  What I really liked about Bob’s post: the opportunities where he got to teach other members of the team.

Jennifer Salvo – Jennifer is Business Intelligence developer at Trek Bicycles (the bike I rode all through college was a Trek!) and her post details the agile development process at Trek Bicycles.  It’s a really interesting read, especially if you’re not familiar with that type of development. For some reason, I like how they refer to a unit of work or development task as a story.  I need to figure out how to work that into conversation…

<I must admit that whenever I read or hear the word scrum, I think of rugby.  Even though I never played rugby.>

Nancy Hidy Wilson – Nancy’s title is SQL Server Service Engineer, and that was a new one for me.  Nancy’s post was great.  It was a walk through of her day but it read like a story as she explained how she tried to solve a problem one way, then another, until she eventually got to a solution (read all the way to the end).  Nancy had a great line: “I’m thinking within a couple of hours I can write a script to save our operational DBAs literally hundreds of man-hours.”  Daunting, but no fear.  And Nancy, I never have a “normal” day either – I completely agree with you about the variety.

Jason Kassay – Jason is a programmer who’s edging toward the DBA/DB developer world.  This came through in his post as he spent some time with code, and some time understanding the schema in a database.  Jason also made time to work on blog posts, which is great to see, and he gets 4387 bonus points for watching Robert Davis‘ webcast on troubleshooting performance issues with the DMVs.

Chris Shaw – Chris is a DBA in Colorado, and that guy leaves his house at 5 AM a couple days a week to go into his office (other days he works from home).  He leaves at 5 AM because he drives two hours.  I’ve seen Chris tweet a few times about driving, I had no idea it was such a commute.  Chris had two stories I related to – one was about how much time he spent trying to tune a stored procedure and the other was when he got involved in a client project, and the client was asking about billing.  One technical issue, one business issue; both reminders to get the whole story.

Rick Krueger – So Rick is a Data Architect and Database Technical Lead.  If I met him at a party and he told me that, I would say, “What does that really mean?” Well, I know now that he writes and tests code, does code reviews, goes to meetings and advises other team members.  I also found out that he’s going to be at SQLSaturday#161 in Iowa City on August 11, and since I’ll be there, I’ll get to meet him!  Also, I really liked Rick’s note about having an environment that mirrors production, and the carpenter’s adage he included.  Never thought of it that, but I’m definitely stealing it.

Rob Farley – The man who hasn’t missed a T-SQL Tuesday post yet, Rob Farley, happens to be another good friend and my non-technical subject pushed him out of his comfort zone.  I think this is good 🙂  Rob is the owner of LobsterPot Solutions, so his day included more high level/management tasks, along with a fair share of tasks related to his PASS Board of Directors duties.  One thing that interests me is the multiple locations from which Rob works.  He could be at home, at a cafe, at a client site or at his office.  This is an advantage of being a consultant and/or owning your own company, I realize, but as someone who has always work in an office, it’s a completely different world.

Greg Lucas – Greg is a Development DBA and he gives a great explanation of why that’s the title he uses.  I like it.  Greg also uses London’s catamaran service to get to work.  I envision a huge, beautiful white boat where Greg is served drinks during his commute.  I am sure this not really how he starts his day.  Greg mentions some refactoring he’s doing (and he mentions captures baselines so he can measure his changes, which earned him 64342 bonus points) and the troubleshooting he did for said code.  Greg earned an additional 855,468 points because he planned to attend SQL in the City the next day.

Shyam Viking – Shyam’s title is Database Architect, which he didn’t reveal until the end, but that’s ok because by reading his post, I was able to guess at what he did.  Shyam did a lot of research throughout the day – and included many of the relevant links which is nice for readers.  He also talks about LINQ, data trends for SQL Server and a data model for a Social Media application.  The last topic had my mind racing as I read through his bullet points.  There is so much to learn about database design.

Michael J. Swart – Michael is a Senior Database Developer, and we met last year at the first SQLSaturday in Cleveland (the next SQLSaturday in Cleveland is on August 18th if you’re interested!).  Michael and I had chatted on Twitter and it was great to finally meet in person.  I like his blog, and I love the pictures that he draws (the one for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday is clever).  In his post, Michael mentions Tim Hortons (I like Timbits), SQL Server 2012, scrum, views, WhoIsActive, poor performing queries and obfuscating data (Michael, you should talk to Brent Ozar and Merrill Aldrich about this, we had a good conversation a few months back).  Michael gets 562,034 bonus points.

Steve Wales – Steve is a Senior Technical Consultant, and I went back and read his earlier post to see what that really means.  Interestingly, I identified with many things.  Anyway, so Steve’s day started early (funny story) and his day is filled with a myriad of projects.  Of all the posts I’ve read thus far, I have identified the most with Steve’s.  The random interruptions, the time tracking, working with multiple platforms.  I get it.  I just don’t have a 17 year old 🙂

Steve Jones – I admit, I don’t know Steve’s title, but I think most people know Steve.  He works for Red Gate, does a ton with SQL Server Central…he’s a pillar in the SQL community.  I am a big fan of Steve 🙂   He mentions in his post that he has a standing desk.  I need to ask him about it.  Steve does a lot of reading, writing and processing.  He also spends this day refining demos and presentations.  And ends his day with a run.  He gets 1000+ bonus points.

Mike Fal – Mike is a DBA and spends some of his day doing what I would call “typical” DBA work – verifying jobs have run, checking alerts, fixing issues with TempDB, etc. as well as research.  I consider research to be typical for DBA, and Mike has plenty of that as he’s learning more about CLR.  Mike, let me know how all the CLR stuff goes.  Still haven’t tackled that one yet!

Alan Wood – Alan lives across the pond in Scotland and is a database architect/developer/analyst (per his About page).   I can see this in Alan’s post.  He talks about SSIS, editing a stored procedure, updating data for testing, data modeling, and performance testing.  Alan also mentions SQL Server Central and Red Gate, so he gets 3249 bonus points.  Oh, and Alan mentions cottage pie, and I have no idea what that is but it sounds like something I’d want to eat on a cold and rainy day.

Rich Brown – Continuing with peeps from across the pond, Rich is a Database Administrator in Edinburgh and he caught my attention immediately when he mentioned that he was not a Single Point of Failure in his organization.  I would love to see that as a T-SQL Tuesday topic…are you a Single Point of Failure in your organization?  And if so, what can you do to change that?  But this is about Rich, sorry, and the kicker for me was when he said he spent probably about one day a month for the “traditional” DBA element.  Much of Rich needs/has to do is automated and documented.  I’m impressed.  My next question to Rich, “So tell me everything that you have automated and document.”  🙂

Chris Richards – Chris has his work cut out for him.  He’s the new guy on the team, he’s asking a lot of questions, he’s not getting the answers he likes, so what does he do?  You have to read his post to find out.  I’d love to see Chris’ day in six months – and see how much it’s changed.  Oh, and Chris gets 5,492 bonus points for running Brent Ozar PLF’s blitz script.

Dave Valentine – Dave is a Database Developer, and he starts his day EARLY (7 am).  He does a lot of things I expect a DB developer to do: fix a stored procedure, attend a scrum meeting (third mention of scrum in T-SQL Tuesday posts!), a bit of training, another code fix (SSIS was involved in this one).  Hey, Dave is the Dave that Rick Krueger mentioned in his post…I will get to meet him in Iowa City as well.

Tim Ford – Ok, I messed up, I missed Tim in the original post <hangs head in shame>.  I apologize Tim!  And I only have myself to blame because he mentioned taking pictures to document his day and I should have just checked his feed.  Speaking of the pictures, I loved them.  Although the picture of breakfast made me more hungry.  Tim is DBA and works from home (someone else I can pester for suggestions) and had a typical atypical day.  Tim gets 723,093 bonus points for dealing with corruption and getting in a workout.  He loses 8,854 for mentioning Access.  Oh, and Tim mentions his Coffee Reports – I love this concept and saw him discuss said reports at a previous SQLSaturday.  That’s a great session.

Joshua Fennessy – Apparently I blocked all posts from Michigan, I missed Josh, too, which is killer because I read his post and loved how he tracked a full 24 hours (the only person to do so!).  Josh is a Senior BI Consultant and travel to Boston to meet with a client was part of this typical day.  Josh did some DBA stuff (verify rebuilds finished), some BI stuff (ETL), and a little bit of performance tuning (blasted TempDB).  Josh also earned 39,200 points for his hill workout and for telling his client about SQL Cruise.  My favorite lines from his post?  “Everyone is making jokes about Twitter.  I show them #sqlhelp.  3 of the 4 are now on Twitter.”   Josh is growing the SQL Community one DBA at a time.

Thank you again to all who posted!

p.s. No bloggers actually “won” anything.  I apologize if you were getting your hopes up!  If you are familiar with Who’s Line is it Anyway? you will understand my bonus points.  I also do this with my kids.  They haven’t caught on yet that they never “win” anything.  If you’ve never watched Who’s Line is it Anyway? you simply must.  And only UK version.