In my career to date I’ve worked as a DBA for mainly “buy don’t build” scenarios. One advantage - and hair-graying problem, if I am honest - has been that I think I’ve seen upward of one or two hundred different ISV-provided applications’ SQL Server databases. It’s a great learning opportunity, as I can see successes and failures in a large variety of designs, and sort of “fast-forward” to version five or eight of a given design pattern to see things like whether it scales, or has storage problems,...(read more)