Product articles
Redgate Flyway
SQL Server

The Importance of Access Checks and Controls in Database Development

This article illustrates the importance in any database development project of a 'multi-layered' approach to database access controls and security checks, based on the Principle of Least Privilege. It describes a security incident that was raised when databases related to a local development project were found to have been erroneously deployed to a remote test server. It explains the nature of the incident, what went wrong that allowed it to happen, and the measures that were put in place to prevent its recurrence. Read more

Working with Flyway And Entity Framework Code First: An Overview

This article presents an approach to database development and deployment that combines the strengths of Entry Framework Code First for .NET-driven development with the control and database versioning provided by Flyway's SQL migrations. It allows every database change to be reviewed and tested for integrity, performance, and stability in the same way as any application change. It should make a Database CI process much easier to sustain. Read more

Undoing Actions on Groups of Database Tables

During development you'll occasionally need an undo script that drops a group of tables, or you might need to truncate a group of tables and then insert fresh data in order to run some tests. Unless you perform the required actions in the correct dependency order, you'll be tripped up by foreign key constraint violations. This article provides a SQL function that returns the list of tables in the correct dependency order. Read more

A Version Control Strategy for Database DevOps

Our goal was to transform a 'serial' and manual development and release process into one that supported parallel development work and automated releases. This article explains step one: migrating our monolithic, centralized repos to Git, then implementing a Release Flow branching strategy for parallel development work streams, and a Pull Request workflow to control an automated build and release process. Read more

Using SQL Backup in Flyway Development Work

For a development team, SQL Backup provides a simple way to restore development or test databases, if required, while minimizing the tedium of the task of taking, managing, and restoring the backups. We can generate the required backup commands in the GUI and then use them to construct a SQL script that backs up all the required databases. We can even use the backup commands in a beforeMigrate SQL callback, in Flyway, to make sure the current version is safely backed up before we run migration. Read more