Editor's Note: SQL Server Magazine welcomes feedback about the magazine. Send your comments to letters@sqlmag.com. Please include your full name, email address, and daytime phone number with your letter. We edit all letters and replies for style, length, and clarity.
A Wake-Up Call
Thank you for the two excellent articles in your January 2002 focus about career development. I've read Brian Moran's "The Future of the DBA" (InstantDoc ID 23240) and Morris Lewis's "Learning for Life" (InstantDoc ID 23090) five times already. I consider these articles and the accompanying sidebars by other SQL Server gurus as a personal wake-up call.
Like the articles note, a good DBA might never use Full-Text Search, but they need to have expertise in a core area such as Data Transformation Services (DTS), Microsoft .NET, business intelligence (BI), or programming and data access. This issue helped me identify my strengths and weaknesses and spurred me to start thinking about how to weather the transition from a "traditional" DBA to a "future" DBA. Again, thank you.
—David Lu
dlu@teletrac.net
Still a Role for Production DBAs
Regarding Brian Moran's "The Future of the DBA" (January 2002, InstantDoc ID 23240), I take exception to the trend toward turning DBAs into programmers and developers. The best place for a production DBA is in the IT network department. A real production DBA should be concentrating on integrating SQL Server into the overall structure of the production environment. As systems get more complicated—for example, with Storage Area Networks (SANs), clusters, and the need for WAN security—DBAs need to be more network-savvy than ever. The career roles that the article describes are certainly excellent jobs for someone in the development department. But the real production DBA should be very close to the server room and working with network operations. Of course, production DBAs should still play an important role in making recommendations and mentoring the design process. Someone at your sister publication Windows & .NET Magazine must agree with me to some extent because that magazine regularly features SQL Serverrelated articles.
—Jason Rubinoff
jasonrubinoff@home.com
Telling Time with Analysis Services
Yoram Levin's "What Time Is It?" (January 2001, InstantDoc ID 16041) is one of the best articles I've seen about Analysis Services Time dimensions. Well done! I'd love to see more articles in this vein.
—Chris McDermott
cmcdermott@armstronglaing.co.uk
T-SQL's Strength? Stability
In his Editorial: "Multilingual SQL Server" (December 2001, InstantDoc ID 22997), Michael Otey said that one of SQL Server's weak points compared with DB2 and Oracle is its lack of programmability. What's its biggest strength? Stability. One of the things that makes SQL perfect as a programming language for databases is that it's type safe and doesn't use pointers or other constructs that can get you into nasty trouble. SQL is a closed language that lets you do what you have to do; it isn't meant to address every coding problem. The big push for Microsoft's T-SQL has been to support the three "abilities": reliability, scalability, and extensibility. By allowing other Microsoft .NET language extensions, Microsoft might be taking steps backward on the first two abilities. The potential for harm is bad enough already with extended stored procedures.
—Lawrence Louie
larryl@match.com
Prev. page
[1]
2
next page 
