‘Twas 4:45 Friday, and all through the office

not a creature was stirring, not even the bosses.

The code was checked in, into Tortoise with care,

in hopes a release date – soon would be there.

The devs were all slumped – in front of computers,

while prospects of bonuses loomed in their futures.

The sysadmin in his cap, and I with a blank stare,

he went for a nap, while I played solitaire.

The phones began ringing and made such a clatter,

We sprang to our chairs to see what was the matter.

Queries galore were starting to time out

I attempted to connect, and waited with doubt.

I finally connected with the DAC in one window,

Leaving the other DBAs waiting in limbo.

One scanned the history using Diagnostic Manager,

The other posted to #sqlhelp (he really likes twitter).

I queried DMOs to collect information.

I knew within moments I hadn’t a notion.

Gathering what I could from multiple queries,

There were dozens of blockers but I still had no theories.

All the queries were timing out and we felt like morons.

We went online for advice, on twitter and forums.

Help Adam! Help Robert!

Please Aaron, or Kin!

We need Kendra, or Brent!

Maybe Paul and/or Kim?!

To the beginning again!

We’re up against the wall!

Look again! Look again!

Look again all!

Just then I saw it, how could I be so stupid!

If this is the answer this whole thing’s concluded!

This happened before, in my panic I’d forgotten.

It’s a catch all stored procedure, this coding is rotten.

I’ve told them repeatedly to make certain changes,

It runs slightly longer when compiled with dates in these ranges.

You wouldn’t think that it mattered. What do you reckon,

the problem compounds when run twenty times a second.

Their answer was brief, I was told “Take a walk”

“We can fix this whole thing by using NOLOCK!”

I wanted to cry, bang my head on the wall.

But I have no say, not one bit at all.

To perform a quick fix I ran recompile.

The backlog cleared up in no time at all.

The blockers were gone, and so too the timeouts.

This was over for now, of that I had no doubts.

We packed our machines and headed for home.

I looked forward to driving, some quiet time alone.

This would happen again, I’d no doubt at all.

But I didn’t mind. someone else was on call!

Filed under: DBA Humor, Microsoft SQL Server, Performance, Problem Resolution, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged: Humor, microsoft sql server, Performance, problem resolution