On Leaky Pipes and DBAs

I was working in my backyard this past weekend trying to find the cause of a leak. You see, there was a big puddle of water in the backyard, it hadn’t rained lately, and it was larger than the sprinklers could’ve made. Down here in Texas almost everyone has a sprinkler system – you have to or your yard will die and your house might come down with foundation problems. So everything has to stay somewhat “moist.”

Anyway, it was obvious I had a problem. So I was turning water on and off and running the sprinkler and the hose and then I stopped. And started thinking like a DBA. Whenever confronted with a database performance problem one of my cardinal rules is to do one thing at a time… otherwise, if you’ve made multiple changes how do you know which helped; and which might’ve hurt? You don’t.

I had violated this rule in my backyard. So I went back to doing one thing at a time. I figured that would give me the best chance to actually find the problem. This approach might take longer but at least it has a chance of success.

Slowly I stepped through turning on and off valves. And then I realized unless there was a huge flow of water leaking somewhere that I might not even notice the leak. It made more sense to turn everything off and let the standing water evaporate. And that takes even more time.

And then I decided it was time to call in an expert. Let them worry about my pipes and leaks… and I’ll worry about the database.

© 2006, Mullins Consulting, Inc.