2011: The Year of Focus

It’s that time of year when people promise to themselves to lose weight, stop smoking, and stop writing cursors.

This month’s TSQL Tuesday topic is about the latter, habits or things you’d change as a DBA.

If you’re new to SQL Server you may not be aware that the amount of knowledge out there is enough to make you want to quit computers altogether and go live in a shack in the woods (a la the Unabomber).

There’s Business Intelligence, T-SQL, Management Studio (learning the GUI), Profiler, Storage options, Clustering, configuring for VM, Managing Performance, and on and on. It’s all quite overwhelming.

This is why my New Year’s (DBA) resolution is to focus on one area and learn it well. The ultimate goal being getting the courage to present at a user group, speak at a SQL Saturday, or maybe take the  SQL MCTS Developer test.

So, for 2011 I have picked ….<drum roll>….. T-SQL and the CLR as my SQL topic of focus for 2011!
Being a reluctant DBA/developer and not exactly a full-time DBA it’s the natural choice.

Focus Group

Now I probably will veer from the goal slightly dependent on what problems crop up in my databases this year. Who knows, this could end up being the year of everything about clustering (heavens help me).

With that said I’d love to find a like-minded professional and/or a group to motivate and receive motivation throughout the year.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in please let me know.

Resources To Get There

To get a good start on my journey I have purchased: “Inside SQL Server 2008 T-SQL Programming” by Itzik Ben-Gan (and others). Itzik is regarded as THE master of T-SQL and I will be taking my time working through every example and page.

Another great resource that was posted late last year was the Microsoft Certified Master series by Paul Randal (another SQL Server god). I will be tearing into the SQLCLR and any other T-SQL related topics that may be offered there as well.

Last, but definitely not least, there are the blogs of SQL MVPs and professionals, which are really too many to mention. I will be clicking on those guys (and gals) a lot this year as well.

This should take me well into 2011 and I hope to be posting a bunch about what I’ve learned.

The Follow-Thru

I’ll be checking back in on this blog in December to let you know how I (and maybe others) did. Either my failure will be laid bare for all the intertubes to see or I will be a semi-expert on T-SQL and the CLR come 2012.