This article uses the PowerShell cmdlets of SQL Change Automation (SCA), formerly DLM-Automation, to take the source code of a database from a directory, validate it, document it and then create a NuGet package of it. Up to this point, the script uses a very similar approach to that described in SQL Change Automation with Read more
There was a time when column aliases in SQL Server and Sybase were only declared by an assignment expression, and some people are still fond of the old way of doing it, in much the same way as some of us still like line-dancing, or singing madrigals dressed in tights. Nowadays, the other relational database Read more
The right to be forgotten is one of the main features of new data protection legislation across the globe. Under Article 17 of one such piece of legislation in Europe, the GDPR, individuals have the right to have personal data erased from all systems and data the company may be storing about them. Similarly, in Read more
Most organizations are finding that the size and number of databases that need to be monitored is increasing, unlike the number of people available to do the work. Now that it is possible for the organization to scale out to cloud-hosted databases, the constraints of the available infrastructure have ceased to govern the growth of Read more
The syntax of the TOP clause insists on a bracketed, or parenthesized, expression as its first argument, so that TOP 34 should, strictly speaking be TOP (34), although if you are just supplying a numeric constant, such as 34, as an argument then either style will work. Early incarnations of TOP could use only a Read more
Developers, when working on databases rather than the application code, often find they have less freedom to experiment than they are used to. It’s not necessarily easy to set up a database for testing, especially if the process isn’t automated. They’ll need to dig around in source control, build the database at the correct version, Read more
Quite often, in a database development project, you need to create several copies of the database under development. They need to be to the current version of the build, or a previous specific version. You need to fill them with a version of the development data that is anonymized. For regression or integration testing, you Read more
Development teams make software available for release once they are confident that it behaves consistently, as it was designed to behave, under as many different user workflows as they can test. Unfortunately, their test cells often don’t reflect the harsher reality of the live environments, where their software will encounter large volumes of real data, Read more
In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to use SQL Change Automation, a PowerShell script, to take the contents of a source control directory for a database, check that it is possible to build from it, document it and then create a NuGet package and place the code in it, along with the documentation. Finally, I’ll Read more
Code analysis is a useful technique for identifying potential issues in your code base, and ensuring that it adheres to your pre-defined standards, so that you can release your software product with more confidence. SQL Prompt 9.2 and later also allows you to view a whole list of code issues detected in a SQL script, Read more
Compliant Database DevOps
