Gary Varga (12/2/2013)
Lynn Pettis (12/2/2013)
When I first started working with SQL Server I was also heavily involved with the hardware and OS (NT 4.0). I was the backup for our SysAdmin and helped build and rebuild our servers many times. Installed the OS, SQL Server, upgrades and patches. As time went on I found myself moved further away from the hardware and OS levels dealing exclusively with SQL Server. In many ways I miss working closer with the hardware and OS levels, as it helped me understand more of what was going on when we had problems.I am hoping to get back some of that knowledge and experience as I look at setting up more of a test environment to work with at home.
I do think that as more roles move away from dealing with the whole stack then we find it harder learning in our own time as we have to regain skills that have been put to one side and often disallowed involvement at work.
Going forward, I expect there will increasingly more abstraction between the logical model of a database and the physical model. For example, we may see a UNIX version of the SQL Server kernel that not only integrates with Hadoop (project Polybase or SQL Server PDW), but also contains it's table space with the HDFS file system. For the DBA and developer, the environment for creating objects, writing T-SQL, or even tuning query execution plans could remain virtually unchanged, but the physical architecture that lay underneath could be significantly different.
http://gsl.azurewebsites.net/Projects/Polybase.aspx
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho