Product learning

Posts by

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

30 August 2019

Phil Factor

30 August 2019

DevOps Self-Service for Databases with SQL Clone

Phil Factor describes the freedom of being able to "self-serve" databases, during testing and development, and explains how it works with SQL Clone. Read more

Phil Factor

28 August 2019

Phil Factor

28 August 2019

You just Build It don’t you? 12 Common Database Build Blockers

Database deployments, like the sheep of exasperated hill-farmers, often find strange and unexpected ways to self-destruct. Phil Factor describes the most common things that can go wrong, and how a reliable automated database build process can prevent messy accidents. Read more

Phil Factor

23 August 2019

Phil Factor

23 August 2019

Monitoring TempDB Contention using Extended Events and SQL Monitor

When the tempdb database is heavily used, processes in any database on the instance will be forced to wait, due to contention as the SQL Server engine tries to manage allocation pages in tempdb. Phil Factor shows how to monitor for signs of trouble. Read more

Phil Factor

14 August 2019

Phil Factor

14 August 2019

Neglecting to Use, or Misusing, the RETURN Keyword (BP016)

Phil Factor demonstrates the correct use of the RETURN keyword in stored procedures or batches, to pass back a non-zero RETURN code to the calling process, informing it of the error. He also explains some of its misuses. Read more

8 August 2019

8 August 2019

Database Build Blockers: Cross-Server Database Dependencies

Phil Factor demonstrates how to tackle builds when databases make cross-server references. The technique uses synonyms to represent the remote objects, and local 'stub' objects to overcome the problems caused by 'missing references' when building the individual objects. Read more

Phil Factor

6 August 2019

Phil Factor

6 August 2019

Problems with adding NOT NULL columns or making nullable columns NOT NULL (EI028)

Phil Factor explains the problems you might encounter when adding a non-nullable column to an existing table or altering a column that contains NULL values to be non-nullable. He demos a migration script that can deploy such changes safely. You might also learn that in an archaic form of the Scots language, used in... Read more

Phil Factor

29 July 2019

Phil Factor

29 July 2019

Why you Should Avoid Using the @@IDENTITY Function

Phil Factor demonstrates why SQL Prompt has a 'Best Practice' rule (BP010) that checks for use of the @@IDENTITY function, and suggests less error-prone ways to get the latest identity values used in a table. Read more

Phil Factor

24 July 2019

Phil Factor

24 July 2019

Database Build Blockers: Mutually Dependent Databases

Phil Factor demonstrates a clever way to create 'stub' objects, in SQL Change Automation pre-deployment scripts, in order to overcome the problems caused by 'missing objects' when building databases that have circular, or mutual, dependencies. In the subsequent deployment, SQL Change Automation fully builds every object in each of the databases, so all dependencies... Read more

Phil Factor

4 July 2019

Phil Factor

4 July 2019

Simple SQL Change Automation Scripting: The Release Object

Once you understand the SCA data objects, it can give you a certain glow of to discover, suddenly, that SCA can do some complicated and time-consuming tasks with just a few lines of code. Phil Factor demonstrates how to get the most of SCA's Release object. Read more

Phil Factor

4 July 2019

Phil Factor

4 July 2019

Simple SQL Change Automation Scripting: Connections, iProjects and Builds

Phil Factor delves into some of SQL Change Automation's data objects, or artifacts, covering the DatabaseConnection, iProject and iBuildArtifact objects. He explains the useful information they contain and how to use them in a PowerShell-automated database delivery process. Read more

Redgate Test Data Manager

Redgate Flyway

Redgate Monitor

Overview

Protect

Automate

Monitor

Product learning

Posts by

Phil Factor

DevOps Self-Service for Databases with SQL Clone

You just Build It don’t you? 12 Common Database Build Blockers

Monitoring TempDB Contention using Extended Events and SQL Monitor

Neglecting to Use, or Misusing, the RETURN Keyword (BP016)

Database Build Blockers: Cross-Server Database Dependencies

Problems with adding NOT NULL columns or making nullable columns NOT NULL (EI028)

Why you Should Avoid Using the @@IDENTITY Function

Database Build Blockers: Mutually Dependent Databases

Simple SQL Change Automation Scripting: The Release Object

Simple SQL Change Automation Scripting: Connections, iProjects and Builds

Redgate Test Data Manager

Redgate Flyway

Redgate Monitor

Overview

Protect

Automate

Monitor

Posts by Phil Factor

Posts by

Phil Factor