Paul Randal has a great blog, and I almost always learn something when I read it. He had a great post recently called "So You Want to Write a Storage Engine..." and it included a fantastic list of books that he'd read in his education that would help someone to learn how to code an operating system, or database storage engine.
Not that most of us want to write that low level code, but I'm sure it's of interest to a few people. I know I found myself checking the list to see how many I'd read and which ones I might want to tackle at some point. Being in technology, I think we're naturally curious, even to the point where we'd like the chance to write an Operating System (or maybe just the idea of trying that).
In a practical sense, I'm surprised that I haven't seen a "so you want to be a DBA" list that examines what books are recommended, or maybe required, to be a good DBA. After all, it seems like we've had an explosion of books in the last few years, more on SQL Server than I've ever seen in the past. There are lots of choices, especially in many niche areas like encryption, Service Broker, and security in addition to the many choices that look to cover an overview of the platform. I'm sure someone will come up with a good list, and I look forward to seeing what would be recommended for various DBAs.
I would hope that most people involved in SQL Server, and technology in general, would be constantly interested in learning more about some aspect of technology. That might be in SQL Server, or in another area that piques your interest. That usually means doing a little reading, research, or work trying out some new type of technology. While I'm not sure that many of you will tackle an OS, I'm sure that some of you are tackling other areas that are of interest.
If you do decide to read through Paul's list, or have one of your own for some other type of technology, let us know with a comment for today's editorial.
Steve Jones
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