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

1 December 2023

Phil Factor

1 December 2023

Code Visibility: Browsing through Flyway Migration Files

If you can convert a SQL file to HTML, then you can inspect your Flyway migration files in a browser. This is especially useful if your SQL is color-coded with the same conventions as it was in your IDE. It is even better still if your browser can allow you to scan through many... Read more

Phil Factor

22 November 2023

Phil Factor

22 November 2023

Doing Flyway Migrations for Many Different Databases and Projects

This article demonstrates a PowerShell automation technique that will allow you to run any Flyway build or migration task on any number of projects and databases, hosted on a range of RDBMSs. It handles all connection and authentication details securely, makes it easier to automate database testing and can send detailed alerts when Flyway... Read more

Phil Factor

8 November 2023

Phil Factor

8 November 2023

Running Database Assertion Tests with Flyway

A database assertion test aims to check that data within a relational database conforms to specific business rules. This article demonstrates how to run these assertion tests automatically in Flyway, checking that the queries under test always produce the expected results. Read more

Phil Factor

31 October 2023

Phil Factor

31 October 2023

Running Structured Database Tests in Flyway

How to run structured Arrange-Asset-Act-Teardown (AAAT) tests, each time Flyway successfully migrates a database, where you can annotate each test script to specify exactly how the test run should proceed, and then save all results and any errors to a simple ASCII report. Read more

Phil Factor

19 October 2023

Phil Factor

19 October 2023

Flyway Alerting and Notifications

Once a scripted Flyway task is tested and bedded-in, it should rarely cause errors, so when one happens the team need to be notified immediately, especially if it is part of an automated deployment process. This article provides a PowerShell cmdlet that will execute any Flyway command, process and filter the Flyway output and... Read more

Phil Factor

12 October 2023

Phil Factor

12 October 2023

Using a GitHub Tagged Release for a Flyway Migration

Why not just build the latest version of any branch of the database by pulling the scripts from the latest tagged release on GitHub? While it is easy to get the files via the GitHub site, it gets tedious to do so repeatedly, via the GUI. It is, however, possible to automate this via... Read more

Phil Factor

5 October 2023

Phil Factor

5 October 2023

Using Database Models and Flyway for Automating Routine Development tasks

Database models have all sorts of useful applications during Flyway development to help us automate those repetitive development tasks that otherwise slow down delivery. This article shows how models can help us automate mundane tasks such as generating a build script for any version of a database or deleting the data from every table. Read more

Phil Factor

25 September 2023

Phil Factor

25 September 2023

Integrating Redgate Monitor into a Tier-1 Alert and Notification System

Redgate Monitor provides detail-level diagnostic data that will allow an expert to drill down to establish the cause of, and a fix for, any database problem. However, with support for webhooks, it can also contribute alerts to the sort of "Tier 1" alerting and paging system that an operations team might use to get... Read more

Phil Factor

21 September 2023

Phil Factor

21 September 2023

Tracking Development Changes using Flyway and Database Models

A database model is a standard document that represents the logical design and structure of a database. If we save a model each time Flyway creates a new version of the database, then we can find out what's in each version, and get an overview of how that structure changed between any two versions.... Read more

Phil Factor

8 September 2023

Phil Factor

8 September 2023

Supporting a Production Database: What’s Required

How to plan for an effective response to database problems, as part of a broader, 'tiered' monitoring strategy for production systems, where the process to resolve any known or routine problem is provided alongside the associated alert, and any urgent issues that can't be fixed, or threaten the quality of the service, are escalated... Read more

Redgate Test Data Manager

Redgate Flyway

Redgate Monitor

Overview

Protect

Automate

Monitor

Product learning

Posts by

Phil Factor

Code Visibility: Browsing through Flyway Migration Files

Doing Flyway Migrations for Many Different Databases and Projects

Running Database Assertion Tests with Flyway

Running Structured Database Tests in Flyway

Flyway Alerting and Notifications

Using a GitHub Tagged Release for a Flyway Migration

Using Database Models and Flyway for Automating Routine Development tasks

Integrating Redgate Monitor into a Tier-1 Alert and Notification System

Tracking Development Changes using Flyway and Database Models

Supporting a Production Database: What’s Required

Redgate Test Data Manager

Redgate Flyway

Redgate Monitor

Overview

Protect

Automate

Monitor

Posts by Phil Factor

Posts by

Phil Factor