Challenge for all the Seniors (DBAs) QuestionAreaYou (Today) You (6 Months) You (1 Year) 1Design Tables 2Write Queries 3Deploy Changes 4Tune Queries 5Monitor Performance 6Troubleshoot Outages 7Install & Configure SQL 8Design & Test DR Using the the questions that follow in the next 8 slides, evaluate your areas of expertise in the today column

Design New Tables 1.Never, I deal with tables other people made. 2.A couple of times a quarter. 3.Once a month. 4.Every week – I’m very familiar with data modelling tools and I own data modelling books.

Write Queries 1.When you write a query, you use the same syntax you havebeen using for years 2.Use books and blogs on line – sometimes. 3.Regularly watch web casts or subscribe to blogs to improve T-SQL 4.Present to local user groups.

Deploy Changes 1.Make them live in production. What, is there something else? 2.Script them out first and test them in development. 3.Script them out, test them, document the change that I’m expecting, and monitor afterwards to make sure I got the change I was expecting. 4.Check the changes into source control, have someone else test them, and then deploy them in an automated fashion.

Tune Queries When I tune queries, I 1.I feel like I’m back in high school, in the back seat of a car, fumbling around in the dark, groping indexes and execution plans blindly. 2.I know when I should apply a missing index recommendation, and when I shouldn’t 3.I know how to hand craft an index to improve a query even when there is no missing index recommendation. 4.I can recognise when I’m getting the wrong join for a query, and I know when I should influence the Server to pick the right one.

Monitor Performance When they say SQL is slow, I 1.Am completely surprised. 2.Know which SQL server metrics to look at. 3.what my server’s normal baselines are for any given metric. 4.Tell them I already knew about it because I have alerting set up correctly, with thresholds configured properly for my baselines, and I don’t have rules set up to push all alerts into a different folder.

Troubleshoot Outages When SQL goes down, I 1.Am completely surprise. 2.Remote desktop in and start poking around. 3.Have a rough idea of what logs I need to hit, in what order, and I am confident in how much time it will take to fail over to my secondary servers. 4.Grabs my customized First Responder Kit and step through my well-rehearsed troubleshooting steps.

Install & Configure SQL When I install SQL Server, I 1.Run setup.exe 2.Google for a setup best practise checklist 3.Grab my customized checklist that has my company-specific settings 4.Get my prepped installation files off the file share and run an automated installation

Design & Test DR When I design SQL HA / DR, I: 1.Wait, what do you mean design? My instances are standalone 2.Use the same techniques I’ve been using for years 3.Have a good idea of what my options are, and work with the business to pick the right solution 4.Get the business’s RPO and RTP requirements in writing, then write down a few options for them with budget estimates

How many Companies have these DBA Types? Development DBADevOps DBAProduction DBA Design tables4 Writes queries4 Deploy changes4 Tune queries4 Monitor performance4 Troubleshoot outages4 Install & config SQL4 Design & test DR4 A score of 4 indicates a position of senior