• DBA Rants

    The Care and Feeding of Good, Skilled Employees

    A blog post by Simon Cooper sent up a reminder of a subject that has been at the forefront of my mind for the last couple weeks and is a follow up to my blog post The Superman Conundrum.  I’d had lunch with a previous coworker from years ago about  less than stellar management behavior directed towards him as an employee and also spoke last week to another previous co-worker about challenges in her current workplace.  I’m pretty content with how I am treated at my company.  Even though the company does not comprise of techies, they at least attempt to…

  • DBA Life

    You Know You’re Doing Too Much Database Work When…

    This is when I know I’ve been doing too much database work in one day.  I awoke from a dream, quite early in the morning and was replaying it in my head.  The scenario went like this: Scene:  City streets, obviously a murder scene with yellow tape drawn and bystanders watching off to the sides as the main characters, two seasoned detectives are discussing the decision to enter the crime scene. Officer #1:  “Are we sure we covered our bases?  Is there anyway the criminal could have escaped the scene or we could have compromised the evidence when we entered…

  • Oracle

    Addressing a Deadlock

    I’ve always had a *thing* for trace files.  They serve me well-  I like them and they seem to really like me.  I have a special affinity for deadlock trace files and someone needs to remind me to pester Cary Millsap about a tool to decipher them so I have even more data to go through…:)  Even without any tools, I can easily pull out what is important and work from this data to run queries and reports to drill down to find work-arounds when changes to logic or design are not an option. Deadlocks, although quite unpleasant, I find…