How to Become an Exceptional DBA

I have worked with database applications for most of my career, and have been a SQL Server DBA for the last thirteen years. I started with the computer industry in 1981, the year the first IBM Personal Computer, running DOS 1.0, was released. In fact, I owned one of the first models off the production line. My first exposure to a database application was in 1982. It was called TIM (Total Information Management) and was written by some guys in Lenexa, KS, in ROM BASIC, the version of BASIC that was built into the first IBM PCs. TIM was slow, hard to use, and very buggy, but it whetted my taste for databases. In 1984, the same developers built a product suite called Smartware, which included a more-sophisticated database application. This is when I first learned how to design databases and develop database applications.