Good luck Roy. It's great to go into something like that with a positive attitude, but try to get the WHY out of him/her so you can evaluate their reasoning for yourself. You seem like a very conscienscious developer, so just because somebody is a DBA doesn't necessarily mean they know database design any better than you. Some of the professional DBAs I've met are great at backing up and restoring databases and managing database servers, but don't have a great deal of experience in database design. What you learn would make a great follow-up post.
I agree with Joseph.
I'm a DBA (Oracle, but it doesn't matter for this post issue). I think it takes quite a bit of time to understand the things you can achieve from a review with a DBA.
a DBA besides the system / recovery issues has a lot of knowledge regarding performance and integrity. This knowledge is very helpful, but one must know that as brilliant as that DBA might be, he cannot truly look at the BIG picture on your system. You should know best what are the things you want to put inside your DB and especially how to retrieve it in the most efficient way.
a DBA can contribute tips, maybe some design flaws he encountered... but the WHY Joseph inssisted on is a great tip.
I must comment on the CD player item - listening to people talk is not the reason why the CD player was put inside your car. I'm sure there is a great music artist / band that would make your car (camel :) ) travel much more joyful.
I would like to extend that and say the it might be a great post item - people revealing which kind of music helps them working better (not just coding the smart assertion, but finding the music that would <b>inspire</b> you to do it.
"No one likes to be self spanked " Too funny Roy. That one liner made my day.
Well James, I had a feeling somebody took care of this issue, I just didn't know exactly where. "Rush" seems to be quite popular, I might try a few others from the detailed list. Thanx !
Yaniv: I've been listening to .NET rocks, Dr. Dobb's Technetcasts, and audio books in the car for years now. I save music for when I get to my desk :)
Good luck, Roy.
At least your database queries are in the stored procedures I hope.
So you can start from there. Database design, performance tuning
t-sql optimizations and other interesting things :)
Hey Roy,
Are you going to post any lessons (if any) learned from the hours spent with the DBA ?