Communities of practice bring people together to share ideas and learn from each other about a common interest. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains and gives some advice on starting them.… Read more
Redgate released the 2021 State of Database DevOps Report in February, and I wrote a short article talking about the key insights from the report. More recently, I decided to take a deeper look at the data, especially how folks from different roles answered the survey questions. To simplify my analysis, I grouped respondents into … Read more
This is the fifth year that Redgate has surveyed IT professionals about their organization’s DevOps practices. Each year, the number of respondents increases, reaching 3,200 submissions this year. An interesting new topic to consider this year is how the Covid-19 pandemic affected DevOps practices. Here are the some of the key insights found in the … Read more
DBAs are in great demand, but what if you are recruiting a DBA for DevOps? Mike Cuppett explains how to hire and train the right DBA for the job.… Read more
To stay competitive and bring value to customers, organisations are adopting DevOps, but finding people experienced in DevOps can be challenging. Robert Sheldon has ten tips to help managers attract and retain DevOps talent.… Read more
Feature branching and pull requests are two important concepts when using Git. In this article, Kendra Little explains these patterns and even provides a video to demonstrate.… Read more
Redgate has recently opened the 2021 State of Database DevOps Survey. Whether or not your organization does DevOps, I would love for you to take the survey. The survey will require around 15 minutes of your time, but I think it’s a great investment as it will benefit the whole community of database administrators, developers, and … Read more
The database is often left behind as organisations embrace DevOps. In this article, Robert Sheldon explains how to successfully bring databases into DevOps, especially when dealing with legacy databases.… Read more
I attended a training session at Redgate this week by Chris Spalton. Chris’ session topic was “An Introduction into Planning User Research.” Chris pointed out that there’s much more to User Research, but that planning the research is particularly important as it is the foundation for everything you do later. If you’re a database administrator … Read more
Have you ever longed for a way of making the delivery of databases more visible, predictable and measurable? Do you ever wish that they would be of better quality, quicker to change, and cost less? Grant Fritchey explains some of the secrets of doing Continuous Integration for Databases to relieve some of the pain-points of the Database Delivery process.… Read more
Containers have already transformed the way application development works, but adoption has been slower for databases. Finally, the revolution is beginning. In this post, Kendra Little shares the two ways in which containers will dramatically change the way teams develop and deploy database changes.… Read more
Grant Fritchey covers database lifecycle management. So often, the unexpected delays in delivering database code are more likely to happen after the developers initiate the release process. The necessary checks and tests can turn up surprises: The handover process can expose deficiencies. With good teamwork, planning and forethought, though, the process can be made almost painless… Read more
Running SQL Server in a container may seem daunting at first, but it’s easy once you understand the handful of commands needed. In this article, Robert Cain demonstrates how to run SQL Server in a Docker container on Ubuntu.… Read more
When you create a table, SQL Server doesn’t save your comments explaining the table as it does with stored procedures, for example. In this article, Phil Factor explains how you can merge the documentation from your build scripts into the database.… Read more
The term DevOps was coined in the early 2000s to improve the speed and resiliency of the delivery of features and applications and providing more value to customers. It’s not about any particular technology, methodology, or toolset, but automation of everything from unit testing to building environments to delivery is part of it. DevOps also … Read more
Despite some humorous examples of deployments gone wrong, failures are not funny. William Brewer explains why staging is so important and how it can help avoid the types of disasters he recalls in this article.… Read more
As developers should not have access to production data, it’s possible that duplicate values can sneak in during migrations. In this article of the series, Phil Factor demonstrates a way to check for duplicates when unique constraints are disabled.… Read more
Each year Redgate Software runs a survey to learn more about how organizations practice DevOps, especially when it relates to the database. This year, over 2000 individuals responded, and they are from diverse industries and company sizes. The key findings in the report are: Frequent database deployments are increasing: 49% of respondents now report they … Read more
Since SQL Server now runs in Linux, more database professionals will begin to learn this operating system. In this article, Robert Cain demonstrates how to set up an Ubuntu virtual machine for learning.… Read more