(Description moved to the bottom. It’s been a while now and I figure the list is more important.)

• July 2022 – Update your resume
• June 2022 – SQL Agent jobs continued
• May 2022 – Books on line
• March 2022 – Formatting
• February 2022 – “Soft” Skills.
• December 2021 – Changing collation
• November 2021 – Backup, restore, and move the system databases.
• October 2021 – What can you tell me about the server your SQL Server instance is on?
• September 2021 – How good is your recovery plan?
• August 2021 – Security Standards
• July 2021 – Log Shipping
• June 2021 – SQL Audits
• May 2021 – Extended Events.
• January 2021 – Create an End of Year/New Year checklist.
• December 2020 – Participate in the Advent of Code.
• November 2020 – Help!
• September 2020 – More DML Triggers
• August 2020 – Write a SELECT statement
• June 2020 – DML Triggers.
• May 2020 – Forum Lurking.
• April 2020 – Continuity planning.
• March 2020 – Database Configurations.
• February 2020 – Write a blog post.
• January 2020 – Document, Document, Document
• December 2019 – The default trace and the system health session.
• November 2019 – SSMS Built in reports
• October 2019 – Code reviews (self and peer)
• September 2019 – Getting the data in
• August 2019 – Getting the data out
• July 2019 – Table Size
• June 2019 – Property Functions
• May 2019 – SQLCMD and the DAC
• April 2019 – Practice dealing with corruption
• March 2019 – Reconfigure tempdb
• February 2019 – Instance configurations
• January 2019 – Baselines
• December 2018 – Configure SSMS
• November 2018 – Constraints
• October 2018 – Time for an upgrade
• September 2018 – Backup and Restore continued
• August 2018 – Set up database mail
• July 2018 – Create a SQL Agent Job
• June 2018 – Alter a database
• May 2018 – Create a database
• April 2018 – Indexes
• March 2018 – Recovery Objectives
• February 2018 – Work with security
• January 2018 – Inspect an Execution Plan
• December 2017 – View the log
• November 2017 – Create a view
• October 2017 – Download and attach/restore one or more sample databases
• September 2017 – Create a home lab
• August 2017 – Create a table
• July 2017 – Take a backup

For years Russ Thomas (b/t) has done a Monthly DBA Challenge and in fact I’ve used it as insperation a number of blog posts myself. Here is part of his description of it:

Often the task is what I consider a low frequency / high liability event – something the typical DBA might only do once or twice in their career, but if called upon would be highly critical to the business.

For example (and one used by Russ in a presentation I saw once) let’s say that the drive that holds tempdb for your instance is gone. Someone made a change on the SAN and poof. Gone. So what do you do? How do you fix it? Do you panic? Or, just maybe, you’ve tried it before. You may not remember exactly what to do, but you know it can be done. A quick bit of memory searching (or as I call my memory Google) and off you go. Also likely the challenge is just a suggestion to push you to try something new.

Anyway, to make a long story short (Too late!) Russ has decided to retire the challenge and asked if anyone wanted to take it over. So, you guessed it, I’m going to give it a shot. I’m going to put my own spin on it though and it’s going to be SQL Homework. Get it? It fits the theme? Come on! It’s pretty obvious. Right? I’m going to be starting with basic but important tasks and I’ll do my best to build over time.