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Phil Factor

Phil Factor (real name withheld to protect the guilty), aka Database Mole, has 30 years of experience with database-intensive applications.

Despite having once been shouted at by a furious Bill Gates at an exhibition in the early 1980s, he has remained resolutely anonymous throughout his career.

He is a regular contributor to Simple Talk and SQLServerCentral.

Phil Factor

11 November 2022

Phil Factor

11 November 2022

Cross-RDBMS Code Quality Reports in Flyway

Before you commit your Flyway migration files, you may want to run some automated checks for style or 'code smells'. This article demonstrates how to run basic cross-RDBMS code quality checks using SQL Fluff. We analyze the results in PowerShell to produce reports and analytics on the number or types of issues found. Read more

Phil Factor

26 October 2022

Phil Factor

26 October 2022

Maintaining a Utilities Schema in a Flyway Project

Whatever development methodology you use, it is useful to have, and independently maintain, a separate schema within a database for utilities. These utilities are database objects that monitor the functioning and operation of the database, but aren't part of the database. This article demonstrates how to manage these utilities from Flyway so that we... Read more

Phil Factor

6 October 2022

Phil Factor

6 October 2022

Data Masking in Principle

This is the first of two articles to describe the principles and practicalities of masking data in databases. It explains why an organization sometimes needs masked data, the various forms of masked data we can use, the sort of data that needs to be masked, and the potential pitfalls. Read more

Phil Factor

30 September 2022

Phil Factor

30 September 2022

Using SQL Backup in Development Work

For a development team, SQL Backup provides a simple way to restore development or test databases, if required, while minimizing the tedium of the task of taking, managing, and restoring the backups. We can generate the required backup commands in the GUI and then use them to construct a SQL script that backs up... Read more

Phil Factor

21 September 2022

Phil Factor

21 September 2022

Try Before You Commit in Flyway

Sometimes we want to check whether it is possible to run a Flyway migration without error, but not actually make the changes. We might just need to 'sanity test' the performance of a migration on the Staging server, for example. By using a placeholder 'switch' to trigger a SQL Exception, we can get Flyway... Read more

Phil Factor

22 August 2022

Phil Factor

22 August 2022

Rollbacks, Undos and Undonts

Rollback scripts are designed to allow us to recover safely from a failed deployment that leaves the database in an indeterminate state. They must check exactly what needs to be reverted before doing so. If you work with an RDBMS that cannot support transaction DDL rollback they are vital. This article proposes a strategy... Read more