T-SQL Tuesday #88: The Daily DB WTF

It’s time for another T-SQL Tuesday!

This month is hosted by Kennie Pontoppidan (b|t). The topic is “the daily (database-related) WTF”. The challenge is to be inspired by IT horror stories from the dailywtf.com and add our own stories.

I’m one of the DBA types who works on the product\application development side of the house. It is my job to make sure that WTF database designs do not happen. However, I’m usually outnumbered and there’s only so much I can do. But if I can win these arguments 50.1% of the time, it still means I’m winning more than I’m losing. However it also means that I still lose quite a bit. And when you come up with a compromise, things can go weird.

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A Woman in SQL, 2017

It’s International Women’s Day 2017! One of the people who tweets for @NESQLServer, Olga Demidova, had the idea to blog and tweet to celebrate today by talking about achievements and challenges. I thought I knew what I wanted to talk about until I started writing.

My first draft of this focused on one of worst experiences I’ve had as a DBA. To be fair, I’ve been pretty lucky in my career where the reason that particular story stood out was because it was not the norm. Of course, I have a story or two to add. (“I thought your division just hired someone for IT. Is he on vacation?”, “She’s just overly emotional and I don’t know how to handle it.”) I do have to step back once in a while and wonder if some of the issues that I faced were because I was the female DBA up against a team of (mostly) male programmers or was it just the old-fashioned conflict of being the one DBA against a team of programmers.

But it’s the 3 words included in the image at the top that made me rethink what I wanted to write about.