What skills don't you get taught about being a good database developer? If you are like most people, there is a whole list of things that are good practices for writing code, but you weren't aware of. And like most people, you might be confused about what things you ought to start learning because of the huge amount of advice from people that are sure "their" way of building software is the best way.
I ran across a great article that tackles this subject, and talks about a few fairly critical things that many developers don't learn. Or maybe they learn them, but don't believe they provide benefits (like version control). It's amazing how often I find developers, and DBAs, reinventing some process, or struggling through the same tasks over and over because they haven't bothered to build a repeatable process.
The best quote in the article is this one: Setting up a staging server should be easy. If it is not easy, you already have a problem in your infrastructure…" It's absolutely true, and if you don't think this is an issue for your company, I have two words for you.
Disaster recovery.
A staging server is the equivalent of setting up your system again in a DR scenario. If that's not easy, then the likelihood of you doing it in a timely, efficient, and acceptable-to-your-boss manner in an emergency is pretty low.
Do yourself a favor at get a staging/QA/UA server set up in your environment. In today's multi-code, hypervisor-ridden technology shop, there's no good excuse not to.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
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