Phil Factor, Author at Redgate

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.

Using Windows Security and Encryption with Flyway

This article describes a simple technique that will allow you to use Flyway securely, even in cases where more than just the login credentials need to be protected. It uses a PowerShell technique that converts an encrypted Flyway configuration file into an array of parameters that Flyway can read just as if you were... Read more

Flyway for SQL Server Data Tools Users

If you are using SSDT for authoring, building, debugging, and publishing a database project, how do you change to, or preferably migrate towards, a Flyway-based database development? Flyway doesn't need to replace any code part of SSDT, but if allowed to manage every release candidate, it does allow for much cleaner branching, merging, and... Read more

Flyway and SSDT: Merging Work from a Branch

In an SSDT-Flyway hybrid development, the required database changes may be delivered as a DACPAC, but we get far more control over merge operations and deployments if they are done using Flyway migrations. This article demonstrates how to automate as much as possible of the work required to extract a Flyway-compatible migration script from... Read more

Flyway and SSDT: Extracting a DACPAC from a Flyway-managed Database

When you are integrating Flyway into an existing SQL Server SSDT development, you don't necessarily have to change everything at once. The development team might continue to use the SSDT tools, but Flyway will soon take over the deployments. This means that any automated processes will need to be able to handle both DACPACs... Read more

Finding External References in Database Deployments

This article outlines the syntax of the three and four dot references that usually denote external database references, demonstrates how to find them either from a live database or by using a text search of a script, and explains some of the complicating factors that can lead to 'false positives'. Read more

How to Automate Cross-Platform Database Development

In order to focus on their primary task of developing databases, the development team need to automate as many as possible of the routine tasks that are essential for database delivery, such as testing, scripting, version control, documentation, code review, reporting and so on. This article gives some advice on how to do it,... Read more

SQL Prompt Safety Net Features for SSMS: SQL History

Mistakes occasionally happen. Sometimes you accidentally close an SSMS query tab without saving it, before realizing it contained an essential bit of code. Occasionally, you make some ill-judged 'refinements' to working code and now just wish you could rewind your tab back in time an hour and forget the whole sorry episode. Now and... Read more

Piping, Filtering and Using Flyway Output in PowerShell

Flyway's output is often overwhelmed with verbose messages, most of which we can ignore but some of which provide vital warnings about failed compilations, or useful details about what a migration or callback did. I'll show how to use some pipeline-aware PowerShell functions to filter out and save the bits we want and pass... Read more

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Posts by

Phil Factor