Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

Friday Flyway Tips–Flyway Parameters

Flyway is a command line tool with lots of options and parameters. Working with those is a pain, but we’ve made this easier in Flyway Desktop 6.5+. In this tip, see how you can add parameters to your Flyway command.

I’ve been working with Flyway Desktop for work more and more as we transition from older SSMS plugins to the standalone tool. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

Flyway Options

There are a lot of options in Flyway that you can use, and we added a dialog in Flyway Desktop to make it easy to construct a command line call. However, we also made the FWD tool work better recently, removing the need to save your changes.

In the migrations tab, I have all my migrations listed, and on the right side, I can see the command that would be run with the Flyway CLI.

If I click “View command”, I can see this command, which has a number of parameters by default.

However, often I want to add other parameters. Below this dialog is the Advanced settings area, which is where we add parameters.

If I click Add parameters, I get a list of all the parameters, and I can type in the list to filter them down. For example, I often want outOfOrder, so if I type “out” I see this listed.

I can select this and then enter a value for the parameter. I showed in a previous tip how you can easily copy migration numbers, which is handy for using in some of these parameter values.

Once I enter a value, I can click “Add parameter”. Of course, if I’ve done something silly, like enter an integer for a true/false value, the GUI tells me.

If I add this, then it’s reflected in the command, which is what I’d copy and paste into some deployment tool like Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Octopus Deploy, etc.

Try it out today. If you haven’t worked with Flyway Desktop, download it today. There is a free version that organizes migrations and paid versions with many more features.

Video Walkthrough

I made a quick video showing this as well. You can watch it below, or check out all the Flyway videos I’ve added:

September 22, 2023
A New Word:Wildred

wildred –adj. feeling the haunting solitude of extremely remote places – a clearing in the forest, a windswept field of snow, a rest area in the middle of nowhere – which makes you feel like you’ve just intruded on a conversation that had nothing to do with you, where even the gravel beneath your feet, and trees overhead are holding themselves back to a pointed, inhospitable silence.

I rarely find myself in a remote place. Except on planes, then I love looking at the remoteness of the world. I was flying back from Austin to Denver and snapped this shot. I have no idea where it is. Somewhere between Austin and Denver. Texas? Oklahoma? SE Colorado? I didn’t expect this.

I enjoy some remoteness. I find myself craving the feeling of wildred, hoping for the chance to be in a place without people, without structures, without anything nearby.

Mostly I get this these days when I have to be somewhere early and no one is up and about. It does happen in winter, snowboarding down trails on a Wednesday in the trees with no one around. I can’t wait for that this next season.

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

September 22, 2023
Creating an Empty Repo in GitHub–#SQLNewBlogger

I saw someone struggling with getting started with a Visual Studio project and Azure DevOps. They got a conflict, which I’ll show and then get you started with an empty repo.

Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

The Problem with Initialized Repos

I wrote about this recently with Azure DevOps and empty repos.. If I initialize a repo in GitHub, or any online provider, and try to push up a local repo, it returns an error that I have conflicts.

I’ve learned that when I want to start a new project, either I create the repo locally and then make an empty one online, or I create it online, clone it, and then start working.

I try to do the second (create online first), but I don’t always remember.

Creating an Empty Repo

In GitHub, if you go to your repositories page, you can see a “New” button on the right.

Click this and enter a name, as I’ve done below. BTW, I love the suggested name.

If you look at the image above, near the bottom, you can see my mouse pointer.

DO NOT check this box if you want an empty repo. Don’t add a .gitignore either. You’ll be adding code from your own project, which likely has a gitignore file and might have a repo. If not, just create a readme.md file in your local git repo.

Don’t add a license file either.

Pushing My Project

Now when you create this, you get the details of how to push your repository. If you have never used git, just open a command prompt and paste these lines in one by one and run them.

That’s it and now you can work and commit in either repo and deal with merges.

SQLNewBlogger

This post was easy for me, but I’ve been in the situation where I’ve made this mistake. In this case, I’d written the other post, so I knew what to do here. I spent another 10 minutes getting GitHub set, taking images, and writing this.

Easy to do, 2 posts from one idea, and showcasing knowledge on another platform. I could do another one with BitBucket or somewhere else, and maybe I will. I have customers that use other platforms.

Maybe you should do this and showcase your versatility to the next person that wants to interview you. If you want to work with software and Git, show them you know the basics. Or even more.

September 20, 2023
The Last Price Bump for the Data Community Summit

This week the cost of the PASS Data Community Summit jumps up to full price, on Sep 21. This is your last chance to save big, so get someone to approve you trip and register this week.

This the the largest and best conference for data professionals. You’ll have experts from all over the world and quite a few Microsoft developers attending. This is a great chance to network with them, learn, and ask questions that might save a support case or help you solve a problem.

Talk to your boss about the event and explain how this benefits your career and helps the company. Many people have found this invaluable over the years as they bring knowledge and contacts back to their organization.

Make a case, get approval, and get registered today and I’ll see you in Seattle this November.

September 18, 2023