Why Free Scripts Matter More Than Your Morning Coffee

Let’s face it: free scripts are the duct tape of the data world. They won’t fix your love life, but they will save you from:

  • Explaining to your boss why the server crashed during the CEO’s demo.
  • Manually updating 137 Excel files at 2 AM.
  • Accidentally dropping a production table and blaming “ghosts in the machine.”

“But Anil, why not just write my own scripts?”
Sure, you could reinvent the wheel. Or you could steal code from people smarter than you and call it “efficiency.” Your choice.

Curated list of free scripts

  • SP_WhoIsActive – Adam Machanic
    Real-time SQL diagnostics because sp_who2 is for amateurs.
  • First Responder Kit – Brent Ozar
    Fix deadlocks, find missing indexes, and diagnose “Why is everything slow?”
  • SQL Server Maintenance Solution – Ola Hallengren
    Automate backups, index rebuilds, and integrity checks. Because sleep > babysitting CHECKDB.
  • SQL Server Troubleshooting Scripts – Eric Darling
  • Opserver – Stack Exchange
    Built by the team at Stack Exchange, it is a free tool for monitoring SQL Servers and more.
  • Dbatools – Chrissy LeMaire
    Almost like a command-line version of SSMS. Extremely helpful for instance migration, implementing best practices, and automation for your SQL Servers.
  • Apache Airflow DAG Templates
    Pre-built pipelines for ETL, API calls, and Slack alerts. Because writing DAGs from scratch is like building IKEA furniture without the manual.
  • Great Expectations Data Tests
    Because data quality is a myth without enforcers. Pre-cooked validation rules (e.g., “Is this column suddenly 90% NULL?”).
  • SQLFluff Templates
    For when your JOIN clauses haunt your dreams. Prettify your SQL so it doesn’t look like a toddler’s crayon masterpiece.
  • SQL Templates – Use SQL Style Guide for clean code.
  • Scikit-learn Pipeline Cookbook
    Because writing StandardScaler() for the 1,000th time is a cry for help. Copy-paste code for feature engineering, model stacking, and hyperparameter tuning.
  • Kaggle: Free datasets, notebooks, and courses. Learn Python, SQL, ML.

Curated list of free GitHub repos

  • Data Engineering Zoomcamp 
    Hands-on projects with Airflow, Spark, dbt, and cloud tools (GCP/AWS). Build pipelines, warehouses, and learn to cry less when Terraform breaks.
  • Awesome Data Engineering
    For when you need to Google less and code more. 500+ tools, tutorials, and frameworks.
  • Python Data Science Handbook
    The “I survived the tutorial” badge for data scientists. Jupyter notebooks for Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, and ML basics.
  • MLOps Zoomcamp
    Because “it works locally” is the biggest lie in tech. Deploy models, monitor drift, and tame ML chaos.
  • FastAI Practical Deep Learning
    For when you want to sound smart at parties. Code-first deep learning with PyTorch.
  • dbt Learn
    Turn messy data into stakeholder-friendly gold. Master data transformation with SQL + Jinja.
  • Metabase Learn
    Stop rebuilding the same chart for every exec. Dashboard templates and SQL snippets.
  • Amazon Redshift Utilities
    For when your Redshift queries are slower than your office Wi-Fi and you need to fix it yesterday. Automates the tedious stuff so you can pretend you knew what you were doing all along. Official AWS scripts for monitoring, tuning, and vacuuming Redshift clusters. Includes query optimization, workload management, and backup tools.

A Friendly Warning

With great power comes great responsibility to not accidentally drop a production table.

  • Always test scripts in a non-production environment (or at least cross your fingers). Your dev environment is not a sacrificial lamb.
  • Read the docs. Or don’t. Live dangerously.

P.S. If you’ve never Googled “how to undo DROP TABLE,” are you even a DBA?