Are you a SQL Server DBA, Developer, Report Writer?
Do you align with a desire to spread God’s Word?
Do you love working in an evolving/energetic environment?

Yes? Well here’s  a neat opportunity.  The Seed Company is a Christian non-profit focused on Bible Translation. Based in Arlington, Texas in the heart of the D/FW metroplex they are seeking a multi-talented individual to fill a big need.

“The Seed Company is a faith-based, 501(c)3 organization committed to the vision of creatively networking God’s people around the world to translate the Bible into every language for His glory”

Here’s the info on the position.

Brief Description: Preserve and extend TSC staff capabilities through database development, administration, and reporting.

Responsibilities:

General:

1. Has servant heart, and a desire to make others more effective in their work.
2. Good interpersonal skills.
3. Strong written and verbal communication skills.
4. Ability to understand user needs and to design database solutions appropriate to those needs.
5. Familiarity with computer networking and security issues.
6. Familiarity with server administration and backup/restore techniques.
7. Ability to document routine tasks.
8. Working knowledge of Microsoft Access, Windows Server and Microsoft Office products.
9. Working knowledge of web technologies.

Specific:

1. Ability to develop and maintain data dictionaries and data models/ schemas.
2. Ability to design and maintain reports and reporting environments.
3. Ability to design and implement user interfaces for data entry and reporting.
4. Ability to design and maintain integration (ETL, SSIS) with other database systems.
5. Knowledge of tools for database design, performance monitoring and user interface development.
6. Thorough understanding of SQL Server and reporting tools.

The position is full-time and will be out of the Arlington, Texas office. There are a number of neat initiatives going on including moving to an SSRS reporting environment (SSRS 2008), the potential to start into Data Warehousing, data integration and automation with a number of internal and external information systems.

Interested parties should contact:

Dave Mutchler
dave_mutchler@tsco.org
(817)-557-2121

Corporate Headquarters

The Seed Company
3030 Matlock Rd. Suite 104
Arlington TX 76015
USA
view map
Phone (817) 557-2121
Toll Free (877)593-7333

Contact Info: Email resumes with cover letter to: dave_mutchler@tsco.org

Business Type: Bible Translation

Comments: The Seed Company is an affiliate of Wycliffe Bible Translators and seeks to make employment decisions in accordance with applicable federal and state employment discrimination laws and regulations. As a religious organization, The Seed Company is entitled to make employment decisions on the basis of religious beliefs and practices of the applicant or employee. All positions require a personal commitment to Christ, evidenced by personal testimony and identification with a local church.

DMV – Dynamic Management Views (and functions)

• Returns server state information that can be used to monitor the health of a server instance, diagnose problems, and tune performance.* MSFT – 2008 BOL

DMV Categories (Not all are going to be in this session)

• Change Data Capture
• Query Notifications
• Common Language Runtime
• Replication
• Database Mirroring
• Resource Governor
• Database Related
• Service Broker
• Execution
• SQL Server Extended Events
• Full-Text Search
• SQL Server Operating System
• Index
• Transaction
• I/O
• Security
• Object

DMV’s help with the ever growing infrastructure and complexities. Allow you to monitor and manage your environment.

Key DMV’s

• Sys.dm_os_sys_info
  • General Server Info
• Sys.dm_exec_requests
  • Sp_who(2)
• Sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats
  • Sp_lock
• Sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats
  • Base DMV for Index Analysis and Recommendations
• Msdb.dbo.backupset
  • Base table for backup history
• Sys.dm_exec_cached_plans
  • Shows query plans that are cached by SQL Server
  • For query plans, this DMV maps to the syscacheobjects table in SQL Server 2000
• Sys.dm_exec_query_stats
  • Performance statistics for cached query plans
  • Top 10
• Sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats
  • I/O stats for data and log files
• Sys.dm_os_memory_pools
  • Monitors Cache memory
• Sys.dm_exec_sql_text
  • Returns the text of the SQL batch that is identified by the specified sql_handle.
  • This table-valued function replaces the system function fn_get_sql
  • Obtained from:
    • Sys.dm_exec_query_stats
    • Sys.dm_exec_requests
    • Sys.dm_exec_cursors
    • Sys.dm_exec_xml_handles
    • Sys.dm_exec_query_memory_grants
    • Sys.dm_exec_connections

“Use it early, use it often” – Jeremy 

Love it that every technical person presenting a demo has hit at least one minor glitch. Let’s me know it’s not just me. Ha!

Resources

• http://www.sswug.org
• Local User Group
• Books On Line
  • SQL Server 2008 Performance Studio
    • https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032349947&CountryCode=US
    • http://www.microsoft.com/midsizebusiness/business-goals/business-operations/

So, he wants us each to share a stupid mistake we’ve made regarding our roles as DBA’s. For myself, I certainly use the term DBA very lightly. Anyhow, that post got me thinking, what was the biggest stupid mistake I’d made over so many years working with DB’s that others could learn from?

Well Jason already hit an obvious one about always having a reliable backup. That’s bitten me a few times, mostly because the network backup solution had “good” backups, only to find out that I needed to restore (rollback) and the backup was actually bad. Yikes. Disk based backup has been more reliable for me, but even today, before I make a DB schema or large data change you’ll find me making a manually backup of the db to some other location.

So, what else could I confess to doing? Well here’s another one, related to backups, but really related to DBA diligence. Not too long ago, I found myself in a bit of a bind. Our SQL server instances have been humming along swimmingly for months. I’ve been heads down on some other not DBA related projects. Peers are working with our CRM solution doing mailing address validation through a third party. Typically export/validation/import type stuff.

I get called over after a few days of overheard head scratching. We talk about the data and potential data corruption that may have taken place a few days ago. Run some queries to identify the extent of the damage. Ouch! Problems are definitely there.

No problem, we’ll get the backup of the DB from 2 days ago, and do some data fixing between the old and new datasets. You know the story. Open SQL Server Management Studio and check out the last backup date/time and transaction logs….WHAT! 3 months ago? Yup, there was an application running on the network that was holding open connections to the database even when it wasn’t doing anything.

“Bad programmer”, I thought knowing good and well it was something I had slapped together to answer a need. Silly me. Well, the DB backups were part of the shared maintenance plan and it was setup to do database checks and fix issues prior to backups. Wow, really? Yup.

The maintenance task could not take the db into single user mode to correct an issue 3 months ago. That had been causing the job to fail and the backups not to run. UGH!

What’s the big morale of the story? Diligence! I had gotten away from the basic of tasks, daily care and feeding of our environment. Sure, if it was a 2005 or 2008 environment I would have had those darned error emails, but we all know what a pain mail was on 2000 so nobody had ever set it up.

You will now find a three ring binder on my desk with a daily checklist in it. Believe me, all DB’s, jobs, etc… are looked at almost every morning now. Don’t get bored of the mundane, it will bite you.

So, there is my humbling story just for you Jason!

Blessings.