Blogs

Group exercises beginning around the room Steve Jones and I had a great time today talking about source control for databases and release patterns for performance and availability in Seattle. We had a great group of folks who asked terrific questions, made thoughtful comments, and interacted throughout the day. Here are some links and resources from the day… Suggestion for configuration option to make SQL Server Developer Edition act like Standard Edition This has been requested by the community for many years, but now is the right time to please vote up this suggestion.

Why I Make Animated Gifs for Presentation Demo Backups

in sql

October 30, 2019

PASS Summit 2019 starts up next Monday with pre-conference sessions. I’ve got my schedule all set, and I’m going to be busy: I’m speaking in two full-day pre-conference sessions, giving two regular sessions, judging the ever-exciting Speaker Idol competition, and also spending time at the Redgate booth in the expo hall. Oh, and I scored a little PASS-TV interview to talk about Redgate right before the keynote on the first day.

Thinking About Robert Davis

in tech-community

October 25, 2019

It’s been more than a year and a half since Robert Davis passed away. I wrote a bit about Robert’s passing last April. I haven’t written about him since, but I think about Robert a lot. I think about Robert when I work on a tough problem that he would have found interesting, when chatting about database nerdery on Twitter, when preparing for a conference or training that I know he would have been excited to attend.

Building my schedule for PASS Summit 2019

in sql

October 24, 2019

It’s just ten days until PASS Summit 2019 begins in Seattle. The schedule is up and there are loads of good sessions. Here’s what I’m putting on my calendar to make sure that I don’t miss it – along with some things that I wish I could attend that I’ll be sure to catch the videos of afterwards.

Workshop Report: Overcoming Obstacles on the Journey to Continuous Delivery for Databases (video with transcript)

in devops

October 17, 2019

In this video, Freyja the puppy and I talk about a recent workshop which I facilitated at the IDC DevOps conference in London.

Setting a Custom Variable in an Azure DevOps Pipeline with PowerShell

in devops

September 2, 2019

Here’s a quick post on something simple which stumped me for a while, in the hopes that search engines help someone else who gets confused in the same way.

Recently, I was doing a bit of work in Azure DevOps Services, preparing a demo for an upcoming webinar. I ran into a simple but frustrating problem.

Git Command Line Tutorial with SQL Change Automation for SSMS (video)

in sql

August 26, 2019

I’m really excited for Redgate’s new SQL Change Automation plugin for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). SQL Change Automation lets DBAs and developers use a migrations-first approach to create precise scripts to apply changes to your database. If you’re curious about what I mean by “migrations-first”, read more about this approach, and how it compares to a state-first approach here.

Key Findings for Database Professionals from the Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2019

in devops

August 22, 2019

The Accelerate: State of DevOps Report 2019 has just been published. This report is the latest in six years of research. With more than 31,000 survey responses, Accelerate is the longest running study of DevOps in academia or industry. In the 2019 edition, research continues to show that DevOps drives business value: high performers at DevOps are “twice as likely to meet or exceed their organizational goals.” While this isn’t a new finding, it’s very important that this continues to be true: why invest in improving at DevOps if it doesn’t drive business value?

Azure DevOps: How to Set a Custom Release Branch Folder Filter in Build Pipeline Triggers (video)

in devops

August 19, 2019

This is the first in a series of posts about simple things that I had a hard time figuring out in Azure DevOps services.

It can be very useful to enable Continuous Integration for multiple folders in your DevOps pipeline – say, for every branch created under releases/ or features/. But configuring this can be strangely confusing!