This month’s invitation from Garry asks us to talk about what SQL related end of year activities we have to look forward to.
Garry has included a few typical DBA examples such as archiving or purging out old data, or updating calendars such as dimension tables or even partition schemes for the new year to come. However as I’ve moved into a new business relatively recently with my focus shifting from a Production to Development perspective these are activities off my plate for the first time in a number of years.
Due to this change my focus has shifted this year and I’ve got two particular areas which I’ll be looking at over the holiday period:
Review our environments
I’m still relatively new into the role so there are a lot of systems out there which I haven’t yet seen or touched. Any breathing room or downtime over the period is an opportunity to start finding and learning about those systems.
Understanding the systems we manage and how they communicate and relate to each other can be invaluable when it comes to diagnosing and identifying fixes for issues, or knowing where we need to start when developing new features or enhancements to existing functionality.
We have a lot of code, repositories, environments, and changes in-flight at any time. It’s a busy place. Thankfully we also have a great team who have been very welcoming and generous to share their time and knowledge helping me get a handle on things. The more I can start to self-learn and pick up the knowledge myself should start to pay dividends into the new year.
On a similar note I also come from a background of monitoring and performance tuning in a more Production role so I’ve been able to start putting those skills into use to get an understanding of not just what is in certain environments, but what’s actually working those environments and how hard they’re being worked. I’ll be looking to continue this while getting a feel for the different solutions we support and hopefully over the coming months be able to offer some new insights and opportunities to look at the performance side of our environments.
Plan for personal development
On a more personal note, once we’ve got a busy festive week out of the way with family and we’re into the new year I think its a good time to take a step back and look at how the last year has been, where I’m at personally, and where I’d like the next year to take me – in all areas of life.
I like to do this each year and get a feel for the direction of travel personally and professionally. I’m not the type to make a list of ‘new year resolutions’ as I’ve failed with a few attempts at those over the years. I prefer to try to align some sort of trajectory to whatever my goals are broadly and plan to head in that direction. Maybe that seems like a bit of a cop out, maybe that’s not helping me to stretch myself like I could. Let’s see what the new year brings and how I’m feeling at the time shall we…
Specifically for SQL Server and the wider data platform my current feelings are that I’d like to look into the Microsoft qualifications next year and to start leaning into Azure. I think there are a lot of fundamental skills in those areas which I’m not aware of and I that at least getting a feel for them would help me better decide on a direction of travel for future learnings or career opportunities down the line.
So, they’re my thoughts on what will keep me busy outside of copious food consumption at the end of the year. I look forward to seeing everyone else’s thoughts and maybe even borrow a few of their suggestions over the period. How about you?
Andy Brownsword 