If you have been considering entering yourself in the Exceptional DBA Awards this year, or nominating a DBA you know, don’t procrastinate much longer, as the last date you can enter is July 10, 2009.

I am one of four judges who will be selecting the nominees, and I want to offer several bits of advice about entering the contest.

• Whether you enter yourself, or a DBA you know, it is very important to complete every question, and to answer it as completely and extensively as possible. It is hard to judge a candidate if they don’t provide much information. If you are entering someone else, and you don’t know the answers to the questions, then have the person you are entering help you answer them.
• While some of the questions are very specific, others are open-ended. While the specific questions are fairly straight-forward to answer, the open-ended questions are not. So that means you need to get a little creative on them.
• As in any endeavor that requires you to communicate with the written word, it is important that you use proper punctuation, spelling and grammar when filling out the form. Of course, if English is not your native language, and we will know that if you fill out the form completely, then we understand your English may not be perfect, and the judges will take that into consideration. You might want to consider writing your answers out first in a Word document, taking the time to carefully construct your answers, then cut and paste them into the entry form.
• If you do a complete and thorough job of answering all the questions, it will probably take you from 30 to 60 minutes to complete it.

If you have any questions about the contest, please ask them here, and I will try to answer them.

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I was recently talking to a friend from the U.K  about how much notice a DBA should give to their employer should they decide to resign. I told him that the general practice for the U.S. was two weeks, but of course this could vary if the DBA signed an employment contract that stated a shorter or longer notice period.

He was surprised to here that only two weeks notice was standard. He expected it to be longer because of the importance of most DBA positions, and the common difficulty of replacing a DBA position in a timely manner. Then I got to thinking, in the several full-time DBA jobs I have had, two weeks notice was what the organizations I had worked for requested. Then I thought some more. I had answered by friend’s question based on my own personal experience, not based on any facts I had.

Next, I decided to see if I could find any facts about the typical resignation notice that DBAs give their organizations, but I couldn’t find any data on this. I guess its not the kind of data people research and publish.

So, here’s my question to you. Based on your past and current jobs as a DBA, has a two week resignation notice been the norm, or not? It will be very interesting to see what various DBAs experiences have been.

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In the last year or so, there have been a lot of articles, blog entries,and forum posts on the kinds of technical questions hiring managers can ask a prospective DBA candidate in order to determine their technical proficiency. While technical skills are important for a DBA, I think a lot of hiring managers place too much emphasis on hard technical skills, and don’t place enough emphasis on the characteristics (personality traits) that DBAs need to have in order to be successful. In the rest of this blog entry, I want to suggest some characteristics that I think all DBAs should have.

Below, I have listed each characteristic, a brief explanation of it, and three questions you might consider asking that can help you tell if if a job candidate has that characteristic or not. While some of these questions include technical aspects about being a DBA, what you are wanting to determine is how well the job candidate fits a particular characteristic, not to judge the technical part of their response. There are no wrong or right answers below. What you are looking for is to see if the job candidate has the characteristics that you think make for a good DBA, and by asking these kinds of questions, you will be one step closer in determining if a particular candidate is best for your organization.

Enjoys Technology: If a DBA doesn’t enjoy technology, what’s the point of being a DBA.

• What’s your favorite part of your job as a DBA?
• Can you give me an example of how you implemented a new technology in your last job?
• How many computers do you have at home, and what do you use them for?

Enjoys Challenges: A DBA’s life is once challenge after another. If a job candidate doesn’t like challenges, then he shouldn’t be a DBA.

• What’s the biggest challenge you have had as a DBA, and how did you handle it?
• What’s the biggest challenge a DBA faces on a daily basis?
• When faced with a difficult problem, how do you normally go about solving it?

Good with Details: A DBA’s job is all about small details, and doing them correctly.

• When you create a new SQL Server Agent job, what steps do you follow?
• How do you generally go about verifying that a SQL Server is running properly?
• Tell me about how you document the processes and procedures you create?

Embraces Change: A DBA’s work is always changing, and you want someone who can keep up with fast-paced change.

• If you were told that all of the SQL Server instances in the company had to be upgraded to SQL Server 2008 within the next month, how would you approach this project?
• If you had been assigned to one project for a while, then were suddenly pulled off taht project for another project, how would you deal with this change?
• Do you like your work to be fast-paced, or slower, and more leisure-like?

Enjoys Learning: Database technology is constantly changing, and a successful DBA must keep current.

• How do you keep up with SQL Server technology?
• What’s your favorite way of learning: classes, seminars, conferences, books, the Internet?
• What was the last new thing you learned about SQL Server that has made your work a little easier?

Accepts Responsibility: DBAs take on a lot of responsibility, whether they realize it or not.

• When was the last time you made a critical mistake, and how did you go about correcting it?
• If you saw that someone in the organization was making poor choices that could damage the integrity of data stored in a database, what would you do?
• If you accidently deleted a table on a production database, what would you do?

Maintains Professionalism: I define professionalism as respect for others in an organization, which is important, as DBAs often work with a lot of different people.

• If you are asked to participate in a project, but don’t have the time to participate, what do you do?
• If you find that a co-worker is having a difficult time with a project, what do you do?
• If you have trouble getting along with a co-worker, how do you deal with that problem?

Trustworthy: DBAs are privy to many company secrets, and you want to ensure that they are capable of keeping them.

• Do you think it is OK for DBAs, or anyone with the proper security, to peruse data in databases just to see what is there?
• If you discovered that someone was accessing data in a database without authorization, what would you do?
• If you discovered that the organization you are working for is involved in illegal activity, what would you do?

Dependable: If you can’t depend on someone, who wants them around?

• If you promise someone that you will perform a task for them be a particular deadline, and for some unforeseen situation you can’t complete the task on time, what would you do?
• If it’s almost time to go home and you just them realize that a database backup has been failing for the past week, what would you do?
• If you are going to be late for a meeting, or for work, what do you generally do?

Can Work as Part of a Team: DBAs are almost always part of a larger team, and need to know how to work well with others to accomplish common goals.

• Do you prefer to work alone, or with a team of co-workers?
• If you are a member of a team, and others in the team aren’t pulling their own weight, what would you do?
• As part of a team, you are asked to perform a task that you don’t want to perform, what would you do?

Can Communicate Effectively: DBAs have to communicate with many different people to successfully execute their job.

• Have you ever presented in front of a large audience?
• Have you ever had any of your writings published?
• If you had to convince a committee that you need to purchase a new, very expensive server, how would you go about making that presentation?

Listens Well: Listening is just as important as communicating.

• An end-user calls you on the phone telling you that the database is down? What do you do next?
• An end-user calls or e-mails you over and over about the same problem, which you have fixed. How do you resolve this discrepancy between what you know is true, and the user who doesn’t believe you?
• When someone you are talking to doesn’t seem to understand your explanation of some issue, how do you deal with it?

Realistic: DBAs need to be realistic about what they can and cannot do given the resources they have available to them.

• If a SQL Server is having performance issues, but you are told there is no budget to get a larger server or to purchase performance tuning software, how would you approach resolving the performance issue?
• If you were told that your budget was to be cut by 20% the upcoming fiscal year, how would you deal with this?
• If you have a great idea for improving a process that would make a significant improvement in productivity, and then were told that your idea was no good, and that we have always done it this way, what would you do?

Patient: Many DBA tasks take a long time, or it takes time for decisions to be implemented. DBAs must understand that patience is an important virtue.

• When installing a new Service Pack on a SQL Server instance, what do you generally do with that time between starting and finishing the process?
• The new server you just ordered has been delayed by 6 weeks from the vendor, how do you deal with that?
• A co-worker asks you a long and difficult question that will require a long and complex answer. How do you deal with that?

Enthusiastic: You want a new DBA to land on his feet running when he starts his new job, and being enthusiastic about the job, and about being a DBA, is a good sign of this.

• Do you participate in the SQL Server community? How?
• What is the best thing about being a DBA?
• If you could make any change in the last organization you worked for, what would that be, and how would you go about making that change?

This is a long list of characteristics and questions, and if you asked them all, your interview might take hours. If you are a hiring manager, I suggest to pick out those characteristics above that are most important to you, and then ask the job candidate several questions about them. In some cases, you will know right away if a candidate meets the characteristic, and other times, you may have to follow up to be sure. In any event, by asking these kinds of questions, in addition to technical questions, you will end up with better information in which to select the best candidate for the job.

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I am working on the outline of a new book I am writing, tentatively called Mastering SQL Server Database Maintenance. It will loosely be based on a similar presentation I give at user groups and conferences.

If you have the time, I would like to get your opinions on one or more of the following topics.

1) Who should the book be targeted to? Who would benefit most from reading such a book?

2) Should the book focus on getting the most out of the Database Maintenance Wizard, should it only mention the Database Maintenance Plan in passing, or should it ignore the Database Maintenance Wizard completely?

3) Should the book emphasize using the Management Studio GUI to get work done, or should it emphasize using T-SQL scripts, or a combination of them both?

4) What topics do you think should be included in the book? Below I have provided a “starting” list. Do you think these topics are important, or not? What topics have I left out?

• Physical File Fragmentation
• Database and Log File Management
• tempdb Maintenance
• msdb Maintenance
• Index Maintenance
• Statistics Maintenance
• Data Corruption Detection
• Database and Log File Protection (Backups)
• Database Maintenance Monitoring

5) What other suggestions do have for such a book?

If you have the time, I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Thanks.

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The DevTeach/SQLTeach keynote was from Tim Huckaby, founder of InterKnowlogy.

DevTeach/SQLTeach was held this past June 8-12 in Vancouver, BC at the Four Seasons Hotel, located directly in the middle of Vancouver’s vibrant city center.

The event offered 8 different tracks (two for SQL Server) and had 58 different speakers presenting over 120 sessions, making this event the largest independent developer and DBA conference in Canada.

I was fortunate to make four presentations at SQLTeach, including: How and When to Implement Indexed Views, How to Use SQL Trace, Using SQLDiag to Troubleshoot SQL Server Problems, and Detecting and Troubleshooting Memory Bottlenecks.

Other SQL Server speakers included such notables as Peter DeBetta, Bill Graziano, Kevin Kline, Jessica Moss, Roman Rehak, Joe Webb, Hugo Shebbeare, and many, many more.

The next DevTeach/SQLTeach will most likely be held in Toronto, June 2010.

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Rodney Landrum, SQL Server MVP, and Karla Remail, coordinator of the Pensacola SQL Saturday,  give out prizes at the conclusion of the event.

The first SQL Saturday to be held in Pensacola, FL was held Saturday, June 6, 2009 at the Pensacola Junior College, and attracted 173 attendees from several different states. There were five simultaneous tracks with 34 different session from 31 different presenters,including Steve Jones (Editor of SQLServerCentral.com), Andy Warren (founder of the SQL Saturday events), Brian Knight, Rodney Landrum, Jessica Moss, myself, and many more.

The event was coordinated by Karla Remail, the leader of the Pensacola SQL Server users group, and many volunteers. The event was such a success, that the next one has already been planned for Saturday, June 5, 2010, which will also include several non-SQL Server tracks, such as .Net and SharePoint.

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I have spoken at many conferences over the years, including the PASS Community Summit and SQL Server Connections, and one of the things I have noticed is that there is very little overlap between the DBAs and developers who attend each of these conferences. There seems to be a group who likes to attend the PASS Community Summit, and another group who likes to attend the SQL Server Connections conference.

In the past, and still today, SQLServerCentral.Com is a strong supporter of the PASS Community Summit. But because of the lack of overlap between these two conferences, we feel that we have been missing out on supporting those DBA and developers who choose to attend the SQL Server Connections conference. Because it is our goal at SQLServerCentral.Com is to be as inclusive as possible, SQLServerCentral.Com has now teamed up with SQL Server Connections to present our own SQL Server track at the conference. This will give us the opportunity to reach out to an entirely different group of DBAs and developers who we don’t normally interact with.

If you are not familiar with SQL Server Connections, it is part of a larger conference called DevConnections that is put on twice a year by Penton Media (they same people who publish SQL Server Magazine.) The annual spring event is held in Orlando, FL, and the annual fall event is held in Las Vegas.

The umbrella DevConnections conference include multiple, simultaneous break-out conferences, which include ASP.NET Connections, SharePoint Connections, Visual Studio & .NET Connections, and of course, SQL Server Connections. When you sign up for one event, you can attend any of the sessions among these concurrent conferences, which give attendees a rich learning experience.

The next SQL Server Connections is going to be held November 9-12, 2009, at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Conference Center in Las Vegas, NV, and will follow this schedule:

Monday, November 9, 2009: Two SQL Server pre-conference workshops:

• Advanced T-SQL for SQL Server 2005 and 2008 with Itzik Ben-Gan
• SQL Server 2005/2008 Database Maintenance Best Practices with Kimberly L. Tripp and Paul S. Randal

Tuesday, November 10, 2009: Microsoft Day:

• There will be three different tracks (DBA, DEV, BI), all presented by members of the Microsoft SQL Server Product Team

Wednesday & Thursday, November 11-12 2009: SQL Server Connections and SQLServerCentral.Com Tracks

• There will be three DBA tracks that are managed by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, which includes a wide variety of speakers.
• There will be a single SQLServerCentral.Com track, that is managed by Brad M. McGehee, which includes five different speakers.
• Attendees will be able to attend any of the sessions in these four concurrent tracks.

Friday, November 13, 2009: One SQL Server post-conference workshop:

• SQL Server 2005/2008 Indexing for Performance with Kimberly L. Tripp

For a list of all the speakers, you can visit this webpage, and for a list of all the sessions, you can visit this webpage.

The SQLServerCentral.Com track includes five speakers presenting a total of nine different sessions. If you recognize any of the speakers, that is because you have probably seen their contributions to the SQLServerCentral.Com and Simple-Talk websites. They include:

Joe Celko	Joe Celko served 10 years on the ANSI/ISO SQL Standards Committee and contributed to the SQL-89 and SQL-92 Standards. He has written over 800 columns in the computer trade and academic press, mostly dealing with data and databases. He is author of seven books on SQL for Morgan-Kaufmann: SQL FOR SMARTIES (1995, second edition 1999, third edition 2005), SQL PUZZLES & ANSWERS (1997), DATA & DATABASES (1999) and TREES & HIERARCHIES IN SQL (2004), SQL PROGRAMMING STYLE (2005) and ANALYTICS & OLAP IN SQL (2005) and THINKING IN SETS (2008). Joe will be presenting two session: Darling, Your SQL is Sooo Last Season! and Naming and Modeling Data Objects.
Grant Fritchey	Grant Fritchey, Microsoft SQL Server MVP, works for an industry-leading engineering and insurance company as a principal DBA. He’s done development of large-scale applications in languages such as Visual Basic, C#, and Java, and has worked with SQL Server since version 6.0. Grant spends a lot of time involved in the SQL Server community, including speaking, blogging, and he is an active participant in the SQLServerCentral.Com forums. He is the author of SQL Server Execution Plans (Simple Talk Publishing, 2008) and SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled (Apress, 2008). Grant will be presenting two session: Scouting Out Execution Plans and MUQT: More Unnecessary Query Tuning.
K. Brian Kelley	Brian is a SQL Server author, columnist, and Microsoft MVP, focusing primarily on SQL Server security and administration. He currently serves as a database administrator / architect for a large bank where he can concentrate on his passion: SQL Server. He is a contributing author to How to Cheat at Securing SQL Server 2005 (Syngress) and Professional SQL Server 2008 Administration (Wrox). In the technical community, Brian is president of the Midlands PASS Chapter. Not only is Brian an active blogger at SQLServerCentral.Com, he is a prolific forum participant and is one of the top forum posters on the website. Brian will be presenting two sessions: Keeping on Top of Your SQL Server Using Dynamic Management Objects and Catalog Views and Best Practices in SQL Server 2008 Configuration Management.
Steve Jones	Steve Jones, Microsoft SQL Server MVP, is the founder and editor of SQLServerCentral.Com. He has been working with SQL Server for 18 years as a DBA at a variety of large and small companies. He is a frequent speaker at user groups and SQL Server conferences and has written hundreds of articles on SQL Server. He is well known for his prolific blogging, editorials, and podcasts at SQLServerCentral.Com. Steve will be making one presentation: The Modern Resume: Building Your Brand.
Brad M. McGehee	Brad M. McGehee is an MCSE+I, MCSD, and MCT (former) with a Bachelors degree in Economics and an MBA. Currently the Director of DBA Education for Red Gate Software, Brad is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server MVP with over 14 years of SQL Server experience, over six years of training experience, and has been involved in the industry since 1982. Brad is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, European PASS, SQL Connections, SQLTeach, SQLBits, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars. Brad is the author or co-author of more than 14 technical books and over 100 published articles. His most recent books include, How to Become an Exceptional DBA, Brad’s Sure Guide to SQL Server 2008: The Top Ten New Features for DBAs, and Mastering SQL Server Profiler. Brad will be presenting two sessions: Optimizing tempdb Performance and Free Software for SQL Server DBAs.

In the months ahead, I will be doing interviews with all of these speakers so that you will get the opportunity to learn a little more about them.

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