Phil Factor tackles the tricky questions you will need to answer when deciding how to automate your SQL Server database builds and deployments with Redgate's development, version control and deployment tools. Read more
Kendra Little demonstrates how to create a SQL Compare filter file and save it to a SQL Change Automation project folder, so that it will be used automatically during development. Read more
Redgate Monitor 10.0.5 now supports a user role called "Reports user". A user added to this role, by an administrator, will be able to 'self-serve' Redgate Monitor reports but won't be able to configure any other aspect of the monitoring service. Jeremiah Peschka explains how it works. Read more
Grant Fritchey explains the core rules and features of Data Masker, and how you go about using them to mask columns, so that when the data is used outside the production system it could not identify an individual or reveal sensitive information. Read more
Richard Macaskill shows how to use Docker Compose to get SQL Data Catalog up and running in a container, in your SQL Server test lab, and then use it to evaluate its data discovery and categorization capabilities on a containerized SQL Server instance. Read more
Not only are Redgate Monitor Groups probably the neatest and most maintainable way of ensuring that all your SQL Servers have the best possible configuration of alerts, but they represent a powerful way of categorizing your SQL Server estate. In this article, I'll show how to use the Redgate Monitor PowerShell API to export these groups, save their settings onto a configuration management system, or compare groups of settings to see the differences between them. Read more
How to use RAISERROR() in T-SQL to send annotations to Redgate Monitor, so you can observe the direct impact of application tasks, or server changes, on the SQL Server metrics. Read more
Phil Factor provides a powerful DOS batch script which, when coupled with SQL Compare CLI, allows you to build databases from source, during development, and fill them with the specific datasets required for testing. Read more
There is no good reason for having ANSI_PADDING set to OFF when you create tables in SQL Server. It was provided purely for legacy databases that had code that assumed the old CHAR behavior for dealing with padding, and its use has now been deprecated. Read more
Phil Factor explains why an ORDER BY clause should always specify the sort columns using their names, or aliases, rather than using an integer to specify the position of a column in the SELECT list. Read more
