Because Spitfire is a Microsoft ISV Partner, I have to renew my SQL Server certification from time to time. This month was one of those times, and you know what, I learned something in the process.

I learned that the test still covers topics that almost no one pays any attention to these days. I had started to think that it was only because I am an old timer that I still thought about things like “physical volumes” and “distribution of IO” and “types of indexes” and (gasp) “index fragmentation.” These days, when you are deploying SQL in a virtual environment with SAN-based storage, all these low level details just seem quaint. Performance and throughput are good enough, so these details fall off the radar. But for sure, all of that is still relevant, just thankfully less critical.

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