Ever thought about what your average week looks like? What are the real core skills your environment uses every day or every week? I tried to write down all the variations I did last week, during an admittedly slow week:

• Adhoc full backup of a database
• Restore database with different name on same server
• Restore database with same and different names on different server
• Copy backup file to different server
• Modified logical file names after restore
• Made database read only
• Made database not read only
• Renamed database
• Responded to alert because of log backup failing
• Identified log backup failing was due to no full backup, which in turn was due to a database being switched from simple to full
• Notified a colleague that a handful of databases were in simple mode (which he changed, leading to above!)
• Revised script to fix logs with excess VLF’s
• Reviewed list of deadlocks for previous day (5 total)
• Watched colleague run script to detach/wait for files to move/re-attach 300+ databases as part of storage upgrade
• Coached someone on TSQL syntax for a query
• Reviewed query plan of a query (was good enough)
• Reviewed source code for a beta UI for a restore app to facilitate internal/recurring work
• Wrote script to identify orphaned users in databases (SQL & Windows(old domain accounts)) and ran on all servers, next step is review and then fix/drop
• Started looking at SQL auditing solutions
• Added a group to a role after a restore to non-prod
• Did my professional development learning (and then some)

Bread and butter work. I probably missed some, but I’ll be watching for those over the next few weeks. I’m interested for a couple reasons:

• Are there tasks that I do so much that it’s worth investing in a way to do them faster and/or make self-service? (or perhaps that could be done a better/different way than the current approach?)
• What skills am I growing?
• What skills am I not growing?
• What skills do I need to grow based on work I do or see being done?
• How long of a time span do I need to get a 80-90% coverage rate on tasks required?

It’s not an analysis I want to do every week or every month – maybe 2-3 times a year, as part of my professional development review. Understanding if the work is staying the same is good to know, and equally good to know if it’s evolving. Writing it down helps to figure it out.