Unit Testing & Intelligent Query Processing

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Actually, these two topics don't have anything to do with one another. I just ran out of days to promote everyone individually who was taking part in putting on Redgate Streamed. Steve Jones Steve is one of the better people I know when it comes to the wisdom and need for testing. Speaking only for myself, I kind of hate setting up tests. Yes, I know how vital they are. Yes, I know they make an enormous positive impact on our ability to generate better code, faster. Yes, I know they're a fundamental aspect of DevOps. Yet, they're a pain the bottom. However, Steve has a way with them. He really does make them look easy. If you're like me and not a huge fan, then his session "The Basics…
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Missing #SQLFamily? Check This Out.

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I am an introvert. Lots of people don't believe it, but it's true. However, I really do love getting to see my #SQLFamily all over the world in my travels with Redgate Software. Unfortunately, our current situation is such that almost no one is travelling and all the events are cancelled or postponed. Redgate Software is here to help. Redgate Streamed We've decided to pull together a virtual event with a bunch of great speakers, people you know and love, and put on an educational event that is absolutely community focused. Yeah, OK, it's virtual. However, we're going to do all we can to make it as much like an in-person event as possible. We're going to connect up a ton of different software to make it possible for the…
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Fritchey Family Christmas Movies

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MERRY CHRISTMAS! HAPPY YULETIDE! HAPPY HANUKKUH! Instead of something technical, let's take a moment to just kick back and enjoy a few great Christmas movies. Now, let's be clear. "It's a Wonderful Life", "Rudolph" and the rest also play at the Fritchey household, but we have a few, special, Christmas movies that I'd like to share. Welcome To The Party Pal! Most everyone can agree that, yes, in fact, Die Hard is very much a Christmas movie (as is Die Hard 2). However, my family enjoys the following films each (or most) Christmas season: The Thin Man: William Powell and Myrna Loy. What else needs to be said? However, wonderful Christmas murder mystery. Mrs. Scary won't let me shoot balloons of the tree though. Mrs Scary's favorite line: "I'll take…
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State of Database DevOps Survey

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Maybe you're using DevOps within your database development and deployment. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're automating all the things or maybe you've got a completely manual set of processes. Fact is, Redgate would like to know. If you can spare a couple of minutes to swing by this link and fill out this survey, I'd sure appreciate it. The fact is, database deployments, regardless of the database, regardless of it being relational or not, can be very difficult. The core of the problem is retention of the existing data. If it was possible to deploy databases the same way we deploy code, throw away the old one, install the new one, usually in a single step, that would be great. However, unfortunately, throwing away databases usually gets organizations quite upset.…
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SQL in the City/PASS Summit

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My great organization, Redgate, is doing things a little different this year at PASS Summit. Instead of hosting our own event, we've decided to host a pre-con at the Summit itself to pass the word on all the amazing work we're doing. It's still going to be called SQL in the City. Follow the link to see the schedule and all the excellent topics. This means, if you're coming to Summit, you can sign up for a precon that will be given by the great team at Redgate all about all the great Redgate tools. Follow this link to get registered. I'll be talking about 10 Steps you can take to make your data compliant, world-wide. You'll also get to hear from Kendra Little, Steve Jones, Arneh Eskandari, Ike Ellis…
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Humbled

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I've received several notes of thanks over the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure exactly what's prompted this sudden outpouring because it's all been about stuff I've done over the years, not anything recent. I've tried to always thank privately those who've sent something along these lines. I may not always do it though. So, just in case, let me publicly state: Thank you for saying that anything I do helps. I freely admit, I'm actively trying to help out. I'm still regularly surprised that any of it's useful. I'm quite humbled by your kind words. I truly appreciate them. I vow to continue to try to be useful. I'll do my best to earn what you've given.
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Teaching DevOps in Indianapolis

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There is literally nothing I like better than working on automation. Before we had all the cool toys that we have now, I was working on automating database deployments. Now, with all the cool toys, I'm not automating deployments. I'm automating builds, tests, environment setup, containers, multiple database platforms and more. If you want to learn about DevOps, source control, tools, automation, artifacts, testing and more, I've got an opportunity for you. In just a couple of weeks, on Friday, June 16th, 2019, I'll be teaching an all day seminar on database DevOps. There are some seats left, but don't wait until it's too late. Click here now to get signed up. This is the only time this year that I'll be presenting this course in the United States. If…
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Redgate Reviews 2018, Predicts 2019

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Our boss came to us and said, "We need one more webinar to round out the year." Well, we're just like you guys, counting down the hours until our holidays start like a short-timer in the military looking at that discharge date.  The boss wants an entertaining, engaging, informative webinar. You know, the usual stuff that Redgate always delivers. Yet, we are seeing the holiday light at the end of the work tunnel so none of us wanted to take on too much of a burden. So, we came up with a solution. We'll all work together to deliver a single webinar. A good round table discussion of all the cool stuff we've seen this year from Redgate, Microsoft, and the rest of the world of data. Plus, we'll toss…
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Natively Compiled Procedures and Bad Execution Plans

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I've been exploring how natively compiled procedures are portrayed within execution plans. There have been two previous posts on the topic, the first discussing the differences in the first operator, the second discussing the differences everywhere else. Now, I'm really interested in generating bad execution plans. But, the interesting thing, I wasn't able to, or, rather, I couldn't see evidence of plans changing based on silly things I did to my queries and data. To start with, here's a query: CREATE PROC [dbo].[AddressDetails] @City NVARCHAR(30) WITH NATIVE_COMPILATION, SCHEMABINDING, EXECUTE AS OWNER AS BEGIN ATOMIC WITH (TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL = SNAPSHOT, LANGUAGE = N'us_english') SELECT a.AddressLine1, a.City, a.PostalCode, sp.Name AS StateProvinceName, cr.Name AS CountryName FROM dbo.Address AS a JOIN dbo.StateProvince AS sp ON sp.StateProvinceID = a.StateProvinceID JOIN dbo.CountryRegion AS cr ON…
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Differences In Native Compiled Procedures Execution Plans

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All the wonderful functionality that in-memory tables and natively compiled procedures provide in SQL Server 2014 is pretty cool. But, changes to core of the engine results in changes in things that we may have developed a level of comfort with. In my post last week I pointed out that you can't see an actual execution plan for natively compiled procedures. There are more changes than just the type of execution plan available. There are also changes to the information available within the plans themselves. For example, I have a couple of stored procedures, one running in AdventureWorks2012 and one in an in-memory enabled database with a few copies of AdventureWorks tables: --natively compiled CREATE PROC dbo.AddressDetails @City NVARCHAR(30) WITH NATIVE_COMPILATION, SCHEMABINDING, EXECUTE AS OWNER AS BEGIN ATOMIC WITH (TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL…
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