Typical Day
Jim Johnson, database administrator for a small chain of big-box stores, leaves for work at 8:30AM—a few minutes earlier than usual. Today promises to be busy and he wants to get things going. If traffic is light, he'll make it to the office in time to check his servers for any overnight problems and maybe get the scoop on this morning's high-level meeting with the management team.
The odds are in his favor—it's a quick twelve-minute drive to the office. Jim logs into his computer and watches his message notifications for words like "server problem," "failure," and "security scan alert." No problems. Cool. Now he can slip down the hall, make coffee, and see what he can dig up on today's big meeting. Whatever's going on, Jim's sure of one thing: he's in for a new project concerning the operational database.
As he approaches the break room door Jim can smell that someone has already made a fresh pot of coffee. He walks in to find Charlotte Smith, known as company gossip and head of the Regional Sales team (only the latter is an official title).
Jim sidles up next to her as he pours himself a cup. "What's up with today's meeting?"
Charlotte tries her best innocent look. "Why would you ask me? I'm just a saleslady."
"Uh-huh. Come on, I know you know what's up."
Eyes glinting, Charlotte lowers her voice to a whisper. "We're partnering with smaller, more specialized stores in remote areas to expand mail-order pickup for the larger company. Basically, we'll be putting hot-ticket items in places where it doesn't make sense to build a separate facility."
"Okay," Jim mumbles. "Thanks." His mind has already started firing in a hundred directions at once. If what Charlotte says is correct, he's going to have a huge new project that'll take some time to wrap his brain around.
Meeting time rolls around and, sure enough, Jim's membership store chain plans to begin using space in smaller stores to sell some regional favorites and add a free shipping drop-off point for mail-order customers. In Jim-terms, this means they'll need to leverage sales data against purchasing locations to optimally place the specialized products in certain remote stores.
Basically, Jim has work to do—and lots of it. He figures the project will take four to six months. He also figures the sales department will want it in thirty days. Sigh. It's impossible to do good work that fast, but that never stops them from asking.
Back in his office, working on a very preliminary plan for the new sales operation, Jim sees his database analyst, Liz, walk by. He motions her in so they can share some ideas about how to make this new project happen.
"The tables won't be that hard to set up," Liz says. "The question, though, is whether we can make our database scheme match whatever systems exist in the smaller locations. Sounds like a headache."
"No, I don't see us having to tie in our system with theirs. Basically, we're just renting space from them."
Liz offers to help by running some diagnostic tests for Jim, which he readily accepts. Of all the co-workers he's trained over the years, Jim trusts Liz the most.
Jim is deep into contingency planning for the new project when Charlotte pops into his office. "Hey, there you are. It's ten past noon already—did you forget about the monthly birthday lunch?"
Ah, the birthday lunch: the perfect dual-purpose office perk that ensures each person has their birthday celebrated and that the free lunch quota is met for everyone else. It's also marginally more fun when yours is one of the birthdays being celebrated, as is the case with Jim this time around. He figures he'll spend twenty to twenty-five minutes schmoozing, and it'll be back to planning.
As Jim enters the party, one of the IT staff says, "Okay, Jim is here. Hey, Jim, how about setting the table?" Jim gives him a wry smile. Setting the table is something DBAs do within a database. Only a couple of people in the room understood that, thus illustrating the other side of office-wide lunches: awkward silences and the occasional (really) bad joke. Oh well, free food is free food.
One barbecue plate and a small piece of birthday cake later, Jim is back to work by 1:00PM. The project is calling, and Jim enjoys a challenge. Problem-solving is a big part of his job. Not only is he responsible for making it all work, he's pretty good at finding ways to make it better than the management team's initial vision.
Using sales statistics, he can set up a semi-regional tracking system for supply and re-order that'll run itself. Lean, efficient, and self-sustaining—for a DBA, that's the ideal combination.
A notification from Jim's calendar breaks his train of thought. Time to check modifications to the system. The amount of data that flows into the system on a daily basis requires constant monitoring—spotting a problem while it's forming is much better than an all-out system breakdown.
Just as Jim is grabbing his laptop to get started, Liz shows up with a small stack of papers. "I checked modifications for you. Here's a print-out if you want to go over it."
"Wow, thanks," Jim says, "but how did you know that was on today's schedule?"
"I hacked into your calendar. You said you needed help, so I'm helping."
Jim laughs. "You hacked into my calendar? You mean the unprotected maintenance calendar the whole IT Department can see? I'm surprised the NSA hasn't stolen you away with those skills."
Liz grins. "Just because it was easy doesn't mean it wasn't hacking. Listen, I'm not too busy for the next few weeks. If you want, you can just push a few of your lower-level tasks to my calendar. If something comes up and I can't get to it, I'll let you know." She gives him a wave and walks off.
Jim sits back at his desk and looks over the logs. One thing he's been needing to do for the past few days is see if he can merge a couple of old databases into new ones. Sort of like cleaning out and reorganizing a closet—a skill Jim's wife doesn't need to know he has.
By the end of the day (5:00PM, on the dot), Jim has finished the merger and has even managed to clean out some old data that's no longer needed. In the back of his mind, he's still thinking of ways to make the new project work and wishing he could set everything else aside and concentrate on it for a few days. But it doesn't work like that.
Tomorrow he'll test modifications and do a backup and restore, then go back to working on the new project. With any luck, he'll show up tomorrow morning to find the test modifications done. It pays to know a "hacker" with good intentions.