Current Activity for PostgreSQL in Redgate Monitor provides a real-time view of queries currently running on your PostgreSQL instances. It will allow you to identify quickly any queries that are currently causing blocking and resource contention issues on an instance. Read more
Maintaining a version of a database opens a lot of possibilities, especially if an automated process can easily grab the current version, at runtime. You might, for example, have a routine that is only appropriate after a particular version. It is also very handy to be able to associate entries in an event log or bug report with the database version. The article describes various ways to get the current Flyway schema version from Flyway, and how to get it using SQL, in SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite. Read more
Data containers can be created, destroyed and reset remarkably quickly, making them very effective for test-driven database development. Each time we reset a data container, it will have the same host, but both the port and password will be different. This article demonstrates how we can use simple PowerShell automation to smooth the process of dealing with ephemeral connection details in our IDEs and command line tasks. Read more
This article discusses Flyway's transition from CONF to TOML configuration files. It highlights the advantages of TOML, such as improved readability, flexibility in managing complex database configurations, and support for specifying multiple database environments. It also discusses a few of the differences to be aware of when switching existing Flyway projects to the new config system. Read more
If you're using a Linux-based operating system, Bash is the obvious choice of scripting language for Flyway. This article demos the basics of dealing with credentials in team-based database development, when using 'traditional' flyway.conf files, and how to save and parse the JSON output of Flyway commands, for example to retrieve the current schema version. It provides a full automation example that will allow a team to maintain several copies of a database, one per development branch, from a Flyway project. Read more
This article demonstrates how to adapt your current database development and testing regimes to use clones (data containers) in Redgate Test Data Manager. It demonstrates how to handle dynamic connection details and how to get from the containers the connection and database information that your development tasks and tests need to function correctly. Read more
Business applications are rarely self-contained, often depending on multiple interconnected databases, each playing a vital role in the functioning of the system. How can we create, refresh, and maintain test data for these complex database systems, and still support dedicated databases and test-driven development processes? This article explains how database instance provisioning helps meet this challenge. Read more
This is the first of two articles to describe the principles and practicalities of masking data in databases. It explains why an organization sometimes needs masked data, the various forms of masked data we can use, the sort of data that needs to be masked, and the potential pitfalls. Read more
This article takes a strategic look at common data masking and anonymization techniques, and the challenges inherent in protecting certain types of sensitive and personal data, while ensuring that it still looks like the real data, and retains its referential integrity, and distribution characteristics. It also explains, briefly, with references, the tools that one can use to mask different types of data and how to provision development and test machines with these 'de-sensitized' databases, or alternatively to produce fake data that looks like the real thing, but in fact is generated randomly. Read more
This article demonstrates how to use Redgate Test Data Manager to automate the delivery and teardown of data containers (clones) on four different RDBMS platforms, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle and MySQL, for use in Flyway development projects. Read more