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

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

Phil Factor

17 August 2023

Phil Factor

17 August 2023

A Test Data Management Strategy for Database Migrations

This article will help you understand the steps to better test data management, when using a migrations-based approach to database development and deployment. It explains the different types of data required and why, the need for separation of DDL and DML code, and the most efficient way to create, load and switch between the... Read more

Phil Factor

3 August 2023

Phil Factor

3 August 2023

Infrequently Asked Questions About Flyway

You can have Flyway up and running in minutes if you're a solo developer managing a single database. However, as you seek to 'scale up' Flyway to accommodate more complex database systems, team-based development, and stricter quality controls, you'll need to tackle some knottier questions. Without adequate answers, tasks such as multi-database management, automation... Read more

Phil Factor

5 July 2023

Phil Factor

5 July 2023

Using SSDT and DACPACs with Flyway: a Demonstration

The aim of this article is simply to demonstrate that you can use two DACPAC files, representing the source and target versions of a SQL Server database, to create a migration file that can then be used in Flyway. Read more

Phil Factor

23 June 2023

Phil Factor

23 June 2023

Database Monitoring for Developers

Database monitoring is an essential part of database development and testing because it will reveal problems early and allow you to drill down to the root cause, as well as look for any worrying trends in behavior of the database, when under load. If you are delaying doing this until a database is in... Read more

Phil Factor

19 June 2023

Phil Factor

19 June 2023

Running Flyway Pre-Migration Checks on the Database

This article demonstrates how to run a preliminary check that issues a warning, or throws an error, if the conditions aren't met for a Flyway migration to succeed. It provides some example checks for PostgreSQL databases that use Flyway SQL callbacks to ensure the server is running the correct PostgreSQL version, or that the... Read more

Phil Factor

6 June 2023

Phil Factor

6 June 2023

Maintaining Variants of a Database using Flyway Locations

In this article, I'll explain why we often need to maintain variants of the same database, at a particular version. I'll demonstrate how useful variants can be for creating slightly modified installations of a database, for special uses, or even for the simple task of provisioning multiple copies of the same version. In doing... Read more

Phil Factor

2 June 2023

Phil Factor

2 June 2023

Storing Credentials Securely on a Windows-based Flyway Installation

This article demonstrates how to use PowerShell to fetch your login credentials from Windows Credential Manager and pipe them securely to Flyway without ever saving them in any form, such as in a file or environment variable. Read more

Phil Factor

31 May 2023

Phil Factor

31 May 2023

Searching Flyway Migration Files using Grep and Regex

This article demonstrates a cross-RDBMS way of searching through a set of SQL migration files, in the right order, to get a narrative summary of what changes were made, or will be made, to one or more of the tables or routines within each migration file. Getting these summary reports, even from a set... Read more

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Product learning

Posts by

Phil Factor

Tracking Development Changes using Flyway and Database Models

Supporting a Production Database: What’s Required

A Test Data Management Strategy for Database Migrations

Infrequently Asked Questions About Flyway

Using SSDT and DACPACs with Flyway: a Demonstration

Database Monitoring for Developers

Running Flyway Pre-Migration Checks on the Database

Maintaining Variants of a Database using Flyway Locations

Storing Credentials Securely on a Windows-based Flyway Installation

Searching Flyway Migration Files using Grep and Regex

Redgate Test Data Manager

Redgate Flyway

Redgate Monitor

Overview

Protect

Automate

Monitor

Posts by Phil Factor

Posts by

Phil Factor