Craig, interesting article, particularly the just say no and passing on problems bit. As we all know when there are performance problems the database always gets blamed first, so having to refer on problems once we have checked things out is not uncommon.

On the just say no section, one of our main interview questions is to ask what the interviewee would do if they received a request over the phone to delete data, if they say they would do it and don't start going on about proper change procedures and backout plans we get worried.

Also management backing for refusing ad-hoc requests is needed all the way up the chain. In service companies this is not often forthcoming and someone will eventually cave in to keep the client happy, so you can end up getting it in the ear from both ends. That doesn't mean the DBA should just give in though, its part of the job to protect the data and take the brickbats.

Hopefully you will avoid any pork chops on the cursor comment, 🙂 as DBA housekeeping jobs are probably the one area they are a good way to do things, with the elapsed time being dominated by the dynamic SQL generated (backup,reindex, checkdb) rather than the loop process itself.