What makes you passionate about working with SQL Server? What lessons have you learned, perhaps the hard way, on how to get the best performance and scalability out of your SQL Server databases? We challenged a group of talented, up-and-coming ‘new voices’ in SQL Server to share their passion and knowledge with the Community. A DBA’s core responsibilities are constant. A DBA must maintain and enforce security mechanisms on the data, prepare effectively for disaster recovery, ensure the performance and availability of all the databases in their care. As such, we have chapters providing tips on how to get the most out of features such as data compression, backup verification, performance tuning with traces and extended events, auditing, SSIS, and more. Side by side with these, we have chapters on the importance to a DBA of communicating clearly with their co-workers and business leaders, presenting data as useful information that the business can use to make decisions, adopting a more Agile approach to their work, and sound project management skills. The resulting book, Tribal SQL, is a reflection of how a DBA’s core and long-standing responsibilities sit alongside new thinking and fresh ideas about where the DBA role is going, and what it means to be a DBA in today’s businesses.