Search Results for: live data

The State of Database DevOps 2020

I've been an advocate for database DevOps since before DevOps was a thing. When I first switched from being a developer full-time to being a DBA full-time, the first shock to my system (and there were a lot of them) was that people didn't put their database code into source control. Turns out, at the time, more than 20 years ago, the reason was because it was brutally difficult to do. Fast forward to today, and there are no serious impediments to implementing source control for your databases. Further, the impediments to automating more and more of development, testing, and deployments for databases are shrinking faster and faster all the time. Whether or not you're doing a literal DevOps process, the concepts of breaking down the barriers to communication, adopting…
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Data Breaches: All Your Fault

One part of my job is to understand the compliance landscape. This means that I read a lot about the GDPR and related similar laws. I also have to read a lot about data breaches in order to understand how and where laws like the GDPR apply to them, and how they happened so that I can better prepare people through good DevOps practices to prevent them. The more I read about data breaches, the more I realize: It's You. It's your fault. Don't believe me? Let's walk through a few recent data breaches together. Passwords? We Don't Need Stinking Passwords. The Collection #1 data that represents 21 million unique email addresses and passwords for a combination of up to more than 700 million, was found by Troy Hunt... on…
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Opening a Twitch Channel, Data Wisdom

I want to let you know that I'm starting a channel on Twitch. You'll be able to see it here. I'm going to start doing regular live events on Fridays, probably around 10AM. Topics will range from query tuning, to GDPR, to Redgate, to Azure Data Studio, pretty much the same as the blog. I'll also take requests on topics and will host live Q&A periods during the sessions so you can ask about anything, whether it's part of that day's topic or not. Additionally, I intend to host live videos at events. I have two coming up in a few weeks, SQL Konferenz and SQLBits. I'll do live sessions at these events so that you can, even if you're not there, take part in them. I'll have interviews with…
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Database Fundamentals #18: The SELECT Statement

In my previous Database Fundamentals post, I showed you how to use the Query Designer to build a query. That was a SELECT statement. The basic construct of all your SELECT statements will be the same. You’re going to define a list of columns, the table or tables you’re interested in, and some sort of filter criteria. That’s the bare bones basics of how it works. But, as we all know, the devil is in the details. There are lots and lots of details. This section will introduce the T-SQL SELECT statement and start explaining some of those details. Column List You’ve been introduced to the basic concepts of the column list in the SELECT statement. It represents the information that is going to be available for display by whatever…
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Databases and DevOps, Tools are the Easy Part

Moving your database development, deployment and management into a DevOps methodology does involve choosing and implementing tools and tooling. Tools are a necessary aspect of DevOps because, one of the fundamentals of implementing a DevOps approach is automation. To automate, you need the right tools. However, tools and automation, while they represent a lot of work, are actually the easy part of the process of moving into DevOps. What's the hard part? Changing how you do things. Change is Hard One of the fundamental questions you need to learn when you start to implement a DevOps approach consists of a single word: Why. "We always manually run a script in staging prior to running it in production." Well, why? Why can't that be automated? Is there a reason that the…
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Speaking at Live360 Orlando

Are you going to be in Florida in November? Me too. I'm privileged to say that I get to speak at SQLServerLive, part of the Live360 event. It takes place November 12-17 at the Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Studios in Orlando. I'm going to be presenting three different sessions. The first is on Azure SQL Database for the DBA. Adoption and interest in Azure and the platform as a service offering is growing like crazy. Get ahead of the curve and figure out how you can use this technology in your organization. I'm also going to be doing a session on automating the management of your Azure databases using PowerShell. I'm sticking to the platform databases with this session (no VMs), but I'm covering Pools, MySQL, Postgres, Azure SQL…
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Redgate Hub LiveStream

Over at Redgate, we've been working on a new way to get information to you. It's called the Redgate Hub. Check it out. To help you understand this new resource, and to show off some cool new material, we've decided to host a livestream event, Redgate Hub Launch on September 6th. Redgate Hub Launch Livestream If you've attended a Redgate event before, you'll have some idea of what we're about. If you haven't, this is your chance to see exactly what we do and how we do it. If you follow the link above to the Launch event you can check out the agenda. We're covering a bunch of topics. It's going to be fun. I'm even doing a presentation based on my new article that just got published. It's…
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Database Fundamentals #6: Create a Table with the SSMS GUI

The whole idea behind databases is to store information, data, in order to look at it later. The place where that data is going to be kept is referred to as a table. A table consists of columns and each column can be defined to store a variety of specific kinds of data. You can make small tables or large ones. The columns on the tables can be made so that they have to have data in them or they can be empty. The choices are yours to make, but you need to know how to set tables up appropriately . In addition to tables, we're going to start learning about columns. Columns can be very generic in nature, supporting all sorts of different kinds of data, or they can be…
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T-SQL Tuesday #091 – Databases and DevOps

Implementing DevOps with databases presents a unique set of challenges. However, just because something might be hard doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. I had the opportunity to work with a team of developers, database developers and DBAs under a management team that all agreed on the common goal we had, delivering more, better performing applications, faster. We didn't know it at the time, but we were doing DevOps. DevOps gets a bad name because, well, the problems that DevOps sets out to solve, poor communication, bad teamwork, dysfunctional development and badly configured and maintained processes, are  done by the same team that attempts to implement DevOps. However, they look on it as a purely mechanical switch that they throw, assign some poor person to the role of DevOps…
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Help Me, Help You, Deliver DevOps

I believe in DevOps. Actually, that's a pretty horrible way to put it. It's not about belief, like keeping Tinkerbell alive. I have successfully worked within an environment that implemented a DevOps approach to development, deployment and maintenance. I also provide classes and consulting on how to approach DevOps from the Ops perspective as well as writing books on the topic. Because I've seen the DevOps approach work, and work well, despite the fact that my principal job description is in the Ops side of DevOps, I am a very strong and passionate advocate for DevOps. But! DevOps Despite the fact that I absolutely support the concepts of DevOps, moving development & deployment into the production space, and moving operations into better support of the development space, I frequently find…
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