When devising the first workshop for the new Redgate DLM training program, Steve Jones and I got into a bit of a debate about branching. Upon reflection, it’s obvious why. People often use the term ‘release branch’, but they can mean different things. It is important to be clear. I did some Googling and... Read more
For a long time, SQL Compare has been the industry standard for comparing and deploying SQL Server database schemas. Packed with features that can be used to maintain a history of deployments, it makes it possible to build up a record of which objects were changed, when a change was applied, who made it,... Read more
Continuous delivery brings big business benefits to application development – it’s time to give the database the same benefits, says Simon Galbraith, chief executive and co-founder of Redgate. Microsoft’s recent announcement that Windows 10 will be the last big-bang release for the operating system was a surprise to many. But what on Earth is... Read more
Over the years, our SQL in the City events have proved enormously popular in offering SQL Server training to hundreds of database professionals. Now in its fifth year, SQL in the City attracts Database Administrators and developers (as well as other professionals who work with SQL Server) who want to hear the world’s top SQL Server speakers... Read more
Trying to tame complexity Over the last few years my team (“DevOps” – the name’s not entirely accurate, but close enough) have been putting together a handful of charter-like documents that we can agree on and work to. This isn’t an especially new idea and we shamelessly cribbed the initial version from one of the other teams.... Read more
If you haven’t heard of DLM Dashboard, let me fill you in – it’s a new free tool for helping SQL Server DBAs and developers know what database schema is deployed where. One of the main ways DLM Dashboard does this is by sending an email notification as soon as it spots any unexpected... Read more
We’ve just finished the acquisition of ReadyRoll, a database migrations and deployment tool that makes it easy for software teams to develop SQL Server databases within Visual Studio. That’s the headline news, but why did we do it, and are our customers really ready for it? I’ll answer the second question first. Yes. With... Read more
As I’ve been speaking and training people on Database Lifecycle Management (DLM), I’ve learned one thing. Trying to implement version control, and Continuous Integration (CI), and automated releases of code is hard. The concept is simple, but all of the various processes, tools, and links that need to be connected can be hard. I’ve... Read more
This week at Redgate HQ we’ve been lucky enough to have a visit from Dave Farley, Continuous Delivery evangelist and co-author of the book Continuous Delivery. In one of our discussions we started talking about database unit testing. Pretty soon we realized we both meant something fundamentally different when we called something a database... Read more
Hopefully you’ve already heard about DLM Dashboard? It’s Redgate’s new free tool for helping anyone who’s responsible for knowing what database schema is deployed where. If you hadn’t heard of it please feel free to download it, set it up, and come back to reading this post in about half an hour… Back with... Read more
