Whichever way you wish to ensure that a database, when built, has all the data that will enable it to function properly, there are reasonably simple ways of doing it. Phil Factor explains the alternatives. 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 for each developer and tester. Read more
John Morehouse describes how a quest to help solve his organization's "deployment bottleneck" led them to a place where they could both deliver application and database changes into the wild at a pace to satisfy customer demand, and achieve a better work-life balance for the team, both of which are well worth having. Read more
Phil Factor starts a series of articles that will demonstrate the use of temporary SQL Server instances, running in Linux containers, into which we can deploy the latest database build, stocked with data, for development and testing work. This initial article shows how to set up a SQL Server instance inside a Linux Docker container, create some sample databases, and persist data locally. Read more
Phil Factor provides a PowerShell script to disconnect your laptop without risking error 21, if you're working with SQL Clone and need to go offline. The same script will then bring the clone database back online smoothly, once you're reconnected. Read more
Faris Hilmi presents the highlights of the latest SQL Prompt 9.5 release, including SSMS 18 and VS 2019 support, schema filtering for code completion suggestions, new code analysis auto-fixes and more. Read more
Louis Davidson demonstrates how SQL Prompt can significantly lessen the pain involved in occasional, 'heavyweight' database refactoring processes, such as renaming modules, tables and columns (Smart Rename), or splitting tables (Split Table). Read more
Many production databases have failed embarrassingly as a result of INSERT code that omits a column list, usually in mysterious ways and often without generating errors. Phil Factor demonstrates the problem, and advocates a 'defense-in-depth' approach to writing SQL, in order to avoid it. Read more