2009

I never wrote down my goals for 2009. Not that I didn’t have any. I’m always learning and often worry about what I don’t know rather than what I do. I'm not sure why, I just do!  My 'to do' list spans a google docs spreadsheet and several notes of personal projects, the majority of which are sql based.

Development

A project to rewrite processing and reporting in an Enterprise Infrastructure is my baby. After a departure from the team, the project became my own. Having planned and documented the stages of the project, I began the frustrating learning curve that is SSIS. I learnt a lot of SSIS (Integration Services) on the fly out of necessity. This was through books, websites, blogs and trial and error.
I utilised VB.NET 2008 for CLR functionality too (something I have only dabbled in before). This was very successful in terms of improving the performance for 2 scalar functions.

Administration

DBA wise, I migrated all environments to SQL 2008 Enterprise

This left me free to investigate and implement Enterprise features,

• Backup compression
• Data (and Index) compression
• Table partitoning and Index partitioning
• Resource Governor

Certifications

Half way through the year I decided to attempt some certifications. The result was obtaining MCITP : Database Administrator 2008 in September and MCITP : Database Developer 2008 in October. 
Both tracks involved passing 2 exams, first the MCTS (Technical Specialist) then the MCITP.