I’ve been working with data in one way or another since I graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1987. Started out in retail managing inventory and creating predictive models maximizing sales and profits. Heavily used the CICS systems and Excel.
In 1998 for family reasons I needed to change careers and landed my first office job. I was managing inventories and a help desk. That is when I dug deep into Excel and Access. Made an interface, collected data, used the data for reports and to make decisions.
My career changed from management to working with data along the way. SQL Server was introduced to me in 2001 and I’ve “thought” in T-sql ever since. Having worked with some very talented people over the years I’ve been shown some fabulous ways to create robust high performance databases that support survey websites, marketing data warehouses and inventory management systems. When I read some of the blogs, books and forums from the good people in the SQL Server community it is overwhelming how much I don’t know. I went to PASS for the first time in 2012 and it was like meeting rock star idols. Felt like such a groupie!
I’m not an application programmer, designer or developer. Dabbled and taken classed but frankly my brain doesn’t work in C#. Now at my second law firm I am heavily focused on the Administration of SQL Servers and the applications they support. I’ve created my own tools with native SQL server to baseline servers and collect performance Metrics. Piggy backed on the Ola Hallengren scripts to capture the metrics while handling backups. Use PowerShell to check server state, installs, logins and look forward to incorporating more custom solutions.
