Neon Enterprise Software Blog

September 2008 - Posts

• DBA Rules of Thumb, Part 3 - Share

  Knowledge transfer is an important part of being a good DBA - both transfering your knowledge to others and participating in having others' knowledge transferred to you. So be sure to share your knowledge freely with others in need instead of hoarding Read More... Posted Monday, September 29, 2008 9:43 AM by cmullins | 0 Comments Filed under: DBA, ROT, user groups

• DBA Rules of Thumb, Part 2 - Automate Intelligently

  Number 2: Automate Why should you do it by hand if you can automate DBA processes? Anything you can do probably can be done better by the computer – if it is programmed to do it properly. And once it is automated you save yourself valuable time. Read More... Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 11:57 AM by cmullins | 0 Comments Filed under: DBA, ROT, automation

• Hurricane Ike Causes Me to Think About Database Disaster Recovery

  I know I just started a series on DBA Rules of Thumb ... and I will get back to continuing that series with my next post here.... but I wanted to take a moment to talk about database disaster recovery while the memories of Hurricane Ike are still fresh Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 23, 2008 12:49 PM by cmullins | 1 Comments Filed under: recovery, backup, disaster recovery

• DBA Rules of Thumb, Part 1 - Document Everything

  Database administration is a very technical discipline, but it is also a discipline in which the practitioner is very visible politically within the organization. DBAs should be armed with a proper attitude and sufficient technical knowledge before attempting Read More... Posted Monday, September 22, 2008 9:23 AM by cmullins | 0 Comments Filed under: DBA, ROT

• On Firemen, Web Time, and Service Levels

  I'm of the opinion that database administration needs to be practiced in a more rigorous manner. Too often the DBA is viewed as a fireman. This is not meant to disparage firemen, of course, but the fireman is called after the fire has started. Database Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 09, 2008 6:19 PM by cmullins | 0 Comments Filed under: recovery, backup, DBA, proactive, SLM, RTO, SLA

• The Tao of DBA

  Can the ancient Chinese philosophy of Tao be applied to database administration? Go with the flow of things, and you will find yourself at one with the mysterious ways of the universe. -Chuang Tzu The senior DBA rocked back in his chair and smiled. The Read More... Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 1:34 PM by cmullins | 0 Comments Filed under: DBA

• Why you should not ignore normalization during logical data modeling.

  I received the following question and thought I'd answer it on the blog: Question : I work in a data-modeling environment with the responsibility of logically modeling (LM) data for mainframe and server databases. LM for the OLTP systems are done Read More... Posted Wednesday, September 03, 2008 3:29 PM by cmullins | 0 Comments Filed under: metadata, data modeling, normalization

• What Are the Hottest IT Roles Today?

  According to a Global Knowledge article which cites Forrester Research data, there are 16 hot roles that IT professionals should consider pursuing. The trend toward IT workers taking on multiple responsibilities and filling hybrid positions is in full Read More... Posted Tuesday, September 02, 2008 11:03 AM by cmullins | 0 Comments Filed under: data governance, data security, IT, database