Our Judges

Meet the panel


Brad McGehee	Gail Shaw	Steve Jones	Rodney Landrum

Brad McGehee

"Why be an ordinary DBA when you can be an exceptional DBA?"

"I am the author of the book, How to Become an Exceptional DBA. I wrote the book because I discovered that there are many DBAs who are aspiring to become better at their job, moving from being an ordinary DBA to becoming an exceptional DBA, and because there were no books to help DBAs make this move. As I researched the book, I also noticed that there are a lot of exceptional DBAs who never receive the recognition they deserve. The Exceptional DBA Awards is one way for unrecognized DBAs to become recognized."

Brad is a frequent speaker at SQL PASS, European PASS, SQL Connections, SQLTeach, SQLBits, SQL Saturdays, TechFests, Code Camps, SQL Server user groups, and other industry seminars, where he shares his 14 years' cumulative knowledge. In 2008, Brad attended 16 conferences and user group events, presented 26 sessions, and had 1,402 people attend them. A well-respected and trusted name in SQL Server literature, Brad is the author or co-author of more than 14 technical books and over 100 published articles. His most recent books include How to Become an Exceptional DBA and Brad's Sure Guide to SQL Server 2008: The Top Ten New Features for DBAs, and Mastering SQL Server Profiler. These books are available for free in PDF format at: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Books/.

Gail Shaw

"The awards show the value that a good DBA can bring to a company and promote the DBA job."

"The Exceptional DBA Awards increase the visibility and awareness of an often overlooked, but very necessary and difficult profession, that of the Database Administrator. DBAs are all too often seen as unnecessary or as people to be avoided as much as possible. The awards show the value that a good DBA can bring to a company and promote the DBA job.

The awards also give DBAs something to strive for, a benchmark to measure themselves against. It's a job where it can be difficult to know what areas to improve yourself in, and having some examples of exceptional DBAs can help others to also become exceptional."

Gail is a database consultant from Johannesburg, South Africa, specializing in performance tuning and database optimization. Gail was awarded MVP for SQL Server in July 2008 and spoke at both TechEd South Africa and the PASS Community Summit in Seattle in the same year. She is a frequent poster on the SQLServerCentral forums and has written articles for both SQLServerCentral and Simple-Talk. She works for XpertEase, a small IT consulting company, specialising in performance tuning and database optimisation. Before moving to consulting she worked at a large South African investment bank and was responsible for the performance of the major systems there.

Steve Jones

"These awards allow us to recognize the people who do the jobs we take for granted."

"We often just expect the database to be there, performing well, much as we expect light when we flip a switch or water when opening a faucet. But there is a lot that goes into ensuring that those services are available, and that is a key part of the DBA role. Too often this is taken for granted."

Steve Jones is the editor of SQLServerCentral, the largest SQL Server community on the Internet. He has worked with SQL Server as a writer, DBA, and developer since 1991 in a variety of large and small companies and is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP.

Rodney Landrum

"Acknowledging the merits of an exceptional DBA demonstrates to the SQL DBA community that there is a quality standard to strive for."

"I was a judge for the Exceptional DBA Awards in 2008, and it was a very rewarding experience in many ways. It gave me the chance to review submissions from DBAs all over the world and to witness some of the challenges that DBAs face on a daily basis, most of which, as a daily DBA myself, I could immediately relate to. To be exceptional, in my opinion, the DBA must proffer solutions across the board that are fundamentally sound and financially rewarding for the company or client. If a DBA can save thousands of dollars by tweaking even one small aspect of a business process that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, to me, then that DBA is exceptional. That goes as well for time savings by showing how to make a query run in seconds where it was taking minutes prior. DBAs are in their respective companies to do a job, but often they are the ones responsible for defining their own role, helping formulate standards based on their experience."

Rodney Landrum has been working with SQL Server technologies for longer than he can remember (he turned 40 in May of 2009 so his memory is going). He writes regularly about many SQL Server technologies, including Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. He has authored three books on Reporting Services and is working on a fourth book at present expanding on several popular articles on his DBA Script Thumb idea. He is a regular contributor to SQL Server Magazine, SQLServerCentral and Simple-Talk, the latter of which he sporadically blogs on about SQL and his plethora of geek tattoos. Rodney also speaks regularly on SQL topics at such events as SQL Saturday in Florida, his home state. His day job finds him overseeing the health and well-being of a large SQL Server infrastructure in Pensacola, Florida. He swears he owns the expression "Working with Databases on a Day to Day Basis" and anyone who disagrees is itching to lose at an arm wrestling match.