Not long ago, I was having to do a fairly simple DBA task onsite. It involved database provisioning by copying a database from one server to another, something I’ve done countless times. I was taking a backup of the source and restoring it under another name on the other server to create the target database. For once, I hadn’t got my cherished copy of SQL Backup, which makes this sort of job into a soothing ritual, like knitting; and I realised I’d momentarily forgotten the SQL code to make it happen. Of course, it didn’t take too long to dig into SSMS and walk through the screens that guide you through the process, and scooping out the script for the task, so as to fine-tune it. It then all came flooding back. I felt embarrassed, like an actor forgetting his lines.

By using any tool, it can make you more productive for the task it is designed for, but leave you curiously exposed when the tool isn’t available. I can understand why some DBAs try to avoid using tools, and instead laboriously continue to do things the long way, with hand-cut SQL: I understand but don’t agree. However, I like to occasionally use those skills that the tool has rendered unnecessary. Why? The thing about old skills is that they can suddenly become useful again.

An illustration should suffice: I once did a most enjoyable government database consultancy that took a year or so. It was high-level stuff of course, defining strategy and context: advising on good practices. However, the word got out that I was a hands-on sort of person and so, at the end of site visits, I was often grabbed by DBAs, sat down in front of a PC and asked to help with SQL Server or Sybase issues. Not a tool in sight. It was all about pummelling in the code. It was scary but fun, and these incidents are now all that I can remember of that time. Well that and the awful food in their canteens. I remember feeling pleased I’d maintained those old SQL skills.

It is common to have mixed feelings about using a tool that greatly increases your productivity, but which renders a hard-won skill useless. I well remember my similar mixed emotions on first using an Entity-Relationship diagramming tool. It is suppose the same pangs once suffered by the farm labourers on seeing the first threshing machine. In truth, there is always ‘transfer of training’. I no longer use Algol, PL/1 or PostScript but the concepts I gained there gave me a head start with what succeeded them. Years of working with Bash scripts, batch files, and the like has made work with toolchains, Powershell and CLI easy to pick up. However, I still like to keep all my SQL skills current even when I don’t need them!