A Christmas Tale for DBAs: ''Twas the Night Before Deployment''

DBAs have a tough job sometimes. When deployments go wrong, they're the ones everyone looks to. They're also the ones who have to fix it, which can mean working through the night, the weekend, the holidays, whatever it takes.

So let's lighten the mood this Christmas with a DBA take on a festive classic, The Night before Christmas. The poem by Clement Clarke Moore was originally published with the title A Visit from St. Nicholas in 1823. It was also put to music by Gene Autry and Rosemary Clooney, and reached number 9 in the US charts in 1952:

Now it's time to read along, read aloud, or sing out at the top of your voice the words to "Twas the night before deployment..."

They worked and they worked, all through the night,
Weary and exhausted, no one knew of their plight,
'Til ping went the inbox, and again and again,
It seemed also users were feeling the pain."

"That's it," said one DBA, who had had quite enough,
"I gave up cookies and warm milk, to have it THIS rough!?"
So, with faces quite contorted by strain,
They started to roll back, but that was also pain.

If you'd like hear Twas the night before deployment being recited (not sung) by me, tune in to the seventh DBAle podcast. This is the series in which I chat to Pre-Sales Engineer, Chris Kerswell, about topical SQL Server issues, and in number seven we address the timely — and complex — subject of Santa. Like many, he does a big bang deployment once a year, but it's an error-prone and laborious process. How could he improve it? What are his options? Could Christmas, like SQL Server, be improved with a DevOps approach? Tune in and find out.