Jack Corbett (10/15/2007)
I enjoyed reading the article as I use articles like this to help me determine what SQL Server skills I am missing that I should have. I also think this article relates to the recent editorial, The General. SQL Server has become so complex that it is difficult to answer all the questions about DBCC commands, etc.. and know all about Windows clustering, RAID, etc.. The tools for SQL Server have gotten better also, so you can maintain a SQL Server without using DBCC commands directly. When I am in an interview I am upfront that there is more I don't know about SQL Server than I do know, but I know where to go to find the answers I need to a problem, whether BOL, google, or SSC. I can do the Day to tasks security, backups, restores, etc.. and in 8 years of working with SQL Server I have never had to do a point in time restore and have only once had to restore a failed server. It was a long night, but no data was lost because we had a good backup plan in place. If I were hiring a DBA, or any IT staff, the first thing I want to see is someone who know they don't know it all, but know where to go to find the answer. Just don't use QotD in the interview. Why would I know that stored procedures can accept up to 2100 parameters!:w00t:
I agree totally. I have been a DB2 Applications DBA and a SQL Server DBA for 7 years now and there is just so much stuff that it can get a bit intimidating sometimes ( CLR hosting, SSAS. SSIS, SSRS, SMO programming, SQLCmd vs. OSQL) to mention a few. How often is one going to be involved in setting-up a cluster, or perform database mirroring? What drives all this in the real world is the kind of business, the structure of the organization, the budget and the extent of data currency that the client can live with in a true disaster. This is often defined in your SLA with the client. Not all applications require immediate failover. In large corporations, with a myriad of centralized and renegade applications, that is just not feasible. A true DBA will make the best of any situation. In a perfect world, third party products should support Windows authentication and support multiple SQL instances but that is not always the case. To my mind, the ultimate interview question for a DBA would be : given this environment, and this problem, how would you go about finding a solution?