To be a DBA for any real length of time takes a certain type of personality.  For starters it helps if you’re fairly strong-willed and confident.  In order to deal with a lot of the customers you find yourself coming in contact with it really helps if you can stand your ground.

This is the exact type of guy that we’ve had as the past 3 DBAs before I got here.  The problem is that they were apparently pretty dumb so they spread so much misinformation about SQL and about DBs in general it’s a constant battle for me to undo it all.  Like I said, these guys were dumb, not malicious so I really don’t think they meant to  spread that much bad information… I think they just didn’t know how to pick up a book.

So this situation causes a special problem for me because I’m trying really hard to do things right here but a lot of my customers and vendors just won’t let me.  “Well, the last guy told us this is how it works”.  Yeah, I bet he did, but that’s not right.  And I can tell them it’s not right 100x, but they’ve heard the same tired story for years now so they’re not likely to believe me even after I prove it to them.  And we all know that the guy who says it the loudest is typically believed.  And I’ve heard that our previous DBAs were all quite passionate that things be done a certain way and they really went to bat for what they wanted.  What’s funny is they went to bat for ridiculous things, and then let a lot of really big things slide… but that’s another post isn’t it?

The only thing I can hope for at this point is to stick around longer than the other DBAs did and eventually my rhetoric will start to sink its way into their heads.  I’m thinking one way to do it is to just flatout lie.  Just tell them, yeah, that’s the way it used to be but on this new version they’ve fixed all that.  Something tells me that’ll work out much better than just telling them the last guys were idiots.  Because if I keep doing that, then I might as well be trying to talk the Vatican out of religion.