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
Greta Rudžionienė provides a step-by-step guide to running SQL code analysis checks, as defined by SQL Code Guard, in SonarQube, a general-purpose code quality tool that can perform continuous code analysis on a variety of languages.Read more
Phil Factor illustrates the 'quirks' of the SQL_VARIANT datatype and why it's best to investigate when SQL Prompt alerts you to its use. It is only safe to store data as a SQL_VARIANT, if you explicitly convert it to its true type before you use it.Read more
If you plan to make production data available for development and test purposes, you'll need to understand which columns contain personal or sensitive data, create a data catalog to record those decisions, devise and implement a data masking, and then provision the sanitized database copies. Richard Macaskill show how to…Read more
The SQL Prompt Best Practice rule checks whether a comparison or expression includes a NULL literal ('NULL'), which in SQL Server, rather than result in an error, will simply always produce a NULL result. Phil Factor explains how to avoid this, and other SQL NULL-related calamities.Read more
Your strategy for loading a freshly built database with data will depend on how much you need. If just a few rows, then single-row INSERT statements will be fine, but for more than that you'll need to build insert the rows using native-format BCP. Fortunately, SQL Change Automation (SCA) can…Read more
If we want the behavior and performance of our test databases to mimic that observed in production, then we must consider not only the database but also the server. Grant Frtichey reviews the server-level objects, settings and features that we may need to consider, and then shows how to 'synchronize'…Read more
Phil Factor demonstrates the bare essentials of SCA PowerShell scripts that can form the basis for an automated process for database delivery or help improve your current process.Read more
Grant Fritchey shows how to provision a group of interdependent databases, masked to protect sensitive or personal data, to each machine in an Azure-based test cell.Read more
Phil Factor demonstrates how to integrate SQL Change Automation into containerized workflows, such as are typical of a microservices architecture. He shows how to automate database builds into a Linux SQL Server container running on Windows, and then backup the containerized database and restore it into dedicated containerized development copies…Read more