Why you Should Always Specify Whether a Column Accepts Nulls

Phil Factor explains the factors that determine whether a column will allow null values, if you don't specify it explicitly in the column definition. If you rely on the default behavior established by your connection settings, you could be in for some nasty surprises. Read more

Using SQL Prompt Code Snippets for Repetitive Tasks

Louis Davidson discovers the joy of using SQL Prompt code snippets to remove repetition from a variety of tasks, from inserting comment headers, to creating tables, to executing useful metadata queries. Read more

Database Build Breakers: Avoiding Constraint Violations during SQL Server Deployments

A common database build breaker is data that violates the conditions of any of the CHECK, UNIQUE or FOREIGN KEY constraints, and unique non-clustered indexes, designed to protect the consistency and integrity of your data. Phil Factor explain how to avoid this problem, using SQL Compare and some custom stored procedures to discover which rows will cause violations, and fixing them, before running the build. Read more

Quickly Find and Mask all Sensitive Data with Data Masker for SQL Server

Khie Biggs, a software developer on the Data Masker team at Redgate explains how a recent set of Data Masker improvements should make it significantly easier and faster to determine what data needs to be masked, implement a masking plan, and then to apply the masking operation, to protect sensitive and personal data in all the tables and columns of your SQL Server databases. Read more

Deployment Suite for Oracle

Deployment Suite for Oracle: What’s New?

Stephanie Herr describes the new features in the Deployment Suite for Oracle that will help you automate your database releases safely, on Linux or Windows. Read more

The Dangers of using Float or Real Datatypes

Floating point datatypes accommodate very big numbers but sacrifice precision. They are handy for some types of scientific calculations, but are dangerous when used more widely, because they can introduce big rounding errors. Read more

Changing SET options in a Procedure or Trigger leads to Recompilation (PE012)

Phil Factor delves into SQL Prompt's performance rule, PE012, which will advise you if it detects the use of the SET statements within a stored procedure or trigger, which might cause unnecessary recompilations, though the issue extends to other types of batches. Read more

Custom Deployments from Source Control using SQL Compare Command line

Giorgi Abashidze explains how his team use a 2-phase deployment process with SQL Compare Command line, and some SQL Synonyms, to automate custom deployments for each of their customers, while only needing to maintain one branch per release in source control. Read more

Checking for Database Events Using Extended Events and SQL Monitor

You need to make sure that nobody tampers with your production databases, or really any databases outside Development. Even if you weren't of a nervous disposition, you'd want to know if a database was stopped or removed. You'd also be intrigued by the sudden unrehearsed addition of a database to a production server. Read more

Cloning all the Databases on a Server

Phil Factor shows uses SQL Clone and PowerShell to automatically create images of all databases on an instance, if they don't already exist, and then create or refresh clones of each one, on all your development servers. Read more

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