The best way to learn any software is to start using it. There are a bunch of software tools in the SQL Server toolbox, but the biggest and most important is SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). SSMS is where you'll spend most of your time when you start to work with SQL Server. It provides a very large series of graphical user interfaces for creating databases, setting up security, reading data out of the database, and all sorts of other things within your SQL Server instances, the databases stored there, and all the stuff inside those databases. It also supplies you with an interface to the basic scripting language of SQL Server, through which you can do almost anything to the server. The scripting language is called Transact Structured Query…
I recently spent two days consulting with a company on their database development and deployment processes. They are a small, capable, team of developers, database developers and a DBA who have embraced the idea that they need to be able to automate their deployments. I wasn't in there to teach them much of anything, but to help walk them through what the possibilities were for their deployments. It was a great experience and I learned a lot. They recognized that it was time to change what they did and how they did it in order to achieve greater efficiencies. They recognized that, while they were successfully building and deploying their databases (a capable team, remember), they were experiencing pain that they could alleviate. Like Peter, it was a time for change. I…
There are lots of people who talk about Application Lifecycle Management. But, the database is a major part of every application and if you do a similar search, there aren't very many people talking about Database Lifecycle Management at all. Why not? I'm positive you're deploying a database with your applications. I'm also positive, because of the unique problems that databases present, primarily around data persistence, that you need to think about how to get your database(s) deployed. Unfortunately, even for strong, capable data professionals, deployment is something thought about later. Or, you're still doing the old school method of waiting until there's a deployment script that you're going to review, line-by-line, before you run it against production. There's a better way. What you need to do is start thinking…
My laptop is out for repair. I'm working currently on a Surface Pro instead. It's spurred me to do something I've been meaning to do anyway. I've started setting up a full demo & testing VM on Azure. I already had the VM up and running (it takes 5 minutes for crying out loud), but I hadn't bothered setting up Red Gate software on it and getting it fully prepped to support my work, demos, or whatever else I might need. But, I finally did. It's working out surprisingly well. I just have to remember to shut the silly thing down when I'm done with it or it does start to bite into my MSDN credit. Anyway... I was working on the VM for a big chunk of the day…
I just had a Tremors moment. "Everybody knows about 'em Earl, we just never told you." Except that no one I showed it to has ever seen it before. So maybe this is something a little new. I had a database selected in the Object Explorer window and I had the Object Explorer Details window open. I noticed a little icon at the bottom of the screen: Then I saw that the bar above it was a moveable bar. So I moved it and saw this: Whoa! So then I tried a table, HumanResources.Department from AdventureWorks2008: Which caused me to check a procedure: Each line has a little icon on the side that lets you copy it, line by line. It's really just a way to display the basic properties…
The invitation this month for #PGSqlPhriday comes from Dian Fay. The topic is pretty simple, database change management. Now, I may have, once or twice, spoken about database change management, database DevOps, automating deployments, and all that sort of thing. Maybe. Once or twice. OK. This is my topic. I've got some great examples on taking changes from the schema on your PostgreSQL databases and then deploying them. All the technical stuff you could want. However, I don't want to talk about that today. Instead, I want to talk about something really important, the concept of rollbacks when it comes to database deployments. Why Are Rollbacks Difficult? The entire purpose of your PostgreSQL database is to persist, that is to store, the data. Then, of course, offer up a way…
Red Gate visited three cities this year with our SQL in the City event; Pasadena, Atlanta and Charlotte. I just wanted to give you a quick assessment of how the events went from my point of view. Overall, each and every one of these events was awesome. I can safely say that because each and every one of these events provided something special, the opportunity to network with our peers and with the developers and project managers at Red Gate (who are also our peers, but not usually available to us). I both took part in the networking and stood back and watched it happen. I love seeing a bunch of data pro's sitting (or standing) in a circle exchanging war stories, ideas, questions, thoughts or suggestions. It means you…
I was talking with some developers from my team about monitoring, and I said, "We all use the same tools," referring to other monitoring software. Then, it hit me. How is AWS collecting monitoring data on it's RDS servers, specifically, the SQL Server instances. So, I set out to determine what happens on AWS RDS when it comes to the native monitoring. The Setup This part should be as obvious as it is easy. I'm going to use Extended Events. I've written before about how AWS RDS supports Extended Events, so I won't repeat all that here. I'll just leave you with the session I'm running to see what happens on AWS RDS: CREATE EVENT SESSION [ExEventTesting] ON SERVER ADD EVENT sqlserver.rpc_completed, ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_batch_completed ADD TARGET package0.event_file (SET filename…
In case you don't know, I've been writing a series of articles over on Simple-Talk as I learn PostgreSQL. It's all from the point of view of a SQL Server person, expanding into a new technology. In other words, a true story. I thought I'd take a moment here on my own blog to talk about the tools I'm using and why I chose those. AWS RDS Let's establish up front, I'm lazy. Very lazy. So yeah, I'm trying to learn this new technology, but I'm going to find as many ways to use the knowledge, skills & tools I already have as I can. Now, I first started learning PostgreSQL because I wanted to learn more about how Flyway works. Further, as I also needed to learn how to…
In the last few Fundamentals posts you were introduced to a couple of ways to limit and control the data stored in the tables in your database. A primary key won’t allow a duplicate value. A foreign key won’t allow a value to be added that doesn’t already exist in the parent table and it will prevent data from being deleted. These are types of constraints on data in your database. There are a bunch of other ways to constrain the data in an effort to ensure that the data stored is exactly what the business needs. The next few Fundamentals posts will cover several methods of limiting data. Unique Constraints to Stop Duplicates When the concept of the primary key was introduced earlier in the series, two different types…