Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

Database Version Control Workshops

We’ve got more Workshops coming this fall from Redgate Software to help you get the most out of our tools and improve your database development processes. The list of our training schedule is out, and I’ll be at a few of these.

The schedule does changes as we can add more dates and partners, so keep checking it, or let us know if you’d like to have a class near you.

Baton Rouge, LA – Jul 31, 2015

I’ll be traveling to Baton Rouge, LA for our July 31 class with Ike Ellis on Database Source Control. Ike’s teaching, and I’m there to help and manage the labs that we’ve put together for the class.

This workshop is the day before SQL Saturday #423 in Baton Rouge, so if you’re attending that, consider coming a day early and getting some hands on knowledge of database and version control on Friday. It’s only $100 (a limited time sale), so register today.

New York City – August 20, 2015

We’ve also scheduled to give a Database Source Control workshop in New York City, in Manhattan on August 20, 2015. Once again, Ike and I will run the workshop, giving you a chance to learn how you can better manage the code in your databases with a VCS.

Come Learn

I hope to see some of you at one of these workshops, or one later in the year. We’ve really worked hard to pack a lot of information into a long day, helping you actually use the tools and technologies to control your database code. We’ll talk about how a VCS integrates with your code, what to include, how to handle branching and merging, and more.

We’ve put the price of these workshops on sale for the remainder of the year, so take advantage and register today.

July 13, 2015
Azure SQL Database – Adding a Login
I’m writing this post as a way to help motivate the #SQLNewBloggers out there. Read the bottom for a few notes on structuring a post.

I am trying to slowly do a little work in the Azure SQL Database world, building some skills that I can use, and I can teach you a bit more about. One of the things I needed to do lately was add a new login to my system, which isn’t intuitive in the portal.

I did go to the Managing Databases and Logins in Azure SQL Database to get some help, but it wasn’t completely clear how to do this.

I setup a database recently for a test project, but I wanted a different user for this database than others I have on this particular Azure SQL Server. I am using the new (2015) portal, and there didn’t seem to be a good way to add a new login, so I connected to do this in SQL. The reference below showed me the standard “CREATE LOGIN” statement I’d use with an on-premise instance, so I tried to run that.

CREATE LOGIN sscqa WITH PASSWORD = ‘mypwd‘; GO

I got this:

OK, no issues. I changed the connection to the use the master database. I used the options after clicking the “Change Connection” button and put in master.

I connected and ran the code to get this:

I needed to not only change my database user connection, but also use the admin user I have. In this case, it’s the jt user I inherited from Jamie Thomson as part of the Hosted AdventureWorks project he started.

Once I did that, the login was created without an issue. Now I need to link it to a user.

SQLNewBlogger

This took about 5 minutes to write, and 5 minute to reshoot some screen shots. The rest was really the 20 minutes I spent mucking around, researching, and reading how to do this. Hopefully this is quicker for me, and you, if you have this need.

Anyone could write this, and I’d encourage you to write your own stories about working with an Azure database if you want to learn about the topic.

Reference
- Managing Databases and Logins in Azure SQL Database
July 13, 2015
Get a comma separated list
I’m writing this post as a way to help motivate the #SQLNewBloggers out there. Read the bottom for a few notes on structuring a post.

I was working on a test of sorts and wanted to return multiple values as the output, but as a single variable. In other words, I couldn’t return a result set, I needed to return a string.

I knew this was easy, and decided this would make a nice simple blog. Here we go.

Let’s start with a simple table. Here’s one that has a few rows in it.

CREATE TABLE MyTest
( id int);
GO
INSERT mytest values (1), (2), (3);
go

I want to return the values “1, 2, 3” as a string, in any order. Here’s how it works:

DECLARE @i VARCHAR(MAX);
SELECT @i = COALESCE(@i + ‘, ‘,”) + CAST( Id AS VARCHAR)
FROM MyTest;
SELECT @i;

The COALESCE is important as the first time this runs, we have a NULL for the variable. In this case, we return an empty string. This is almost like the inverse of the operation that ends recursion. We add in the first row, and we end up with ‘1’ as the string.

Note: it could be 2 or 3 in the string as I don’t have an ORDER BY. DO NOT depend on the order of insertion in the table. If you care about ordering, always include an ORDER BY.

The next execution has a blank string (NOT NULL), so that is returned. In this case, we have ‘1’ + ‘, ‘ for the first part. The second part adds in the next row.

This continues, and I get a nice set of output.

SQLNewBlogger

This one was short. It took me almost as much time to write the code and find a reference as it did to write the post. Five minutes.

References

This is basic T-SQL, but here’s another look at this.
- http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2008/06/04/sql-server-create-a-comma-delimited-list-using-select-clause-from-table-column/
July 8, 2015
Defining Foreign Keys at Table Create Time
Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

How many of you can define a foreign key when you create the table? Probably a few of you, but I bet most of you are like me and don’t necessarily know the syntax. I have often defined these later, which is fine. As long as they get defined.

However I knew I needed a specific key when I was creating a table and couldn’t remember the syntax, so I had to search and learn how. I used Google and saw a few links from MSDN, but those tend to be overly documentation heavy. One of the links was to SQL Authority, run by Pinal Dave. He does a great job of simplifying things (and he’s a friend), so I followed that link. I could see the syntax and tested it in minutes.

It’s easy to create a Primary Key in CREATE TABLE, and I wrote about that for one of my first SQLNewBlogger posts. The Foreign Key is similar, but not quite as simple.

Imagine that I have a parent table:
```
CREATE TABLE orders
  (
    orderid INT IDENTITY(1, 1) CONSTRAINT Orders_PK PRIMARY KEY ( orderid )
  , orderdate DATETIME
  , complete BIT
  );
GO
```
I now want to create a child table and link the orderid in the child to the parent. I can do it like this:
```
CREATE TABLE OrderLines
  (
    orderlineid INT
      IDENTITY(1, 1) CONSTRAINT OrderLines_PK PRIMARY KEY ( orderlineid )
  , orderid INT
      CONSTRAINT orderlines_order_fk FOREIGN KEY REFERENCES orders ( orderid )
  , qty INT
  );
GO
```
Note that I define a constraint inline, just as I did for the parent. However I note this one is an FK and it "references" another table. In this case, I list the Orders table and put the columns in parenthesis.

Quick, easy, build your FKs inline when you know about them in advance.

SQLNewBlogger

While trying to remember how to create an FK, I ran a search and chose the reference below to start. A matter of seconds had me seeing the syntax and writing the code.

Putting this together was less than ten minutes.

References

Creating Primary Key and Foreign Key Constraints – http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2008/09/08/sql-server-%E2%80%93-2008-creating-primary-key-foreign-key-and-default-constraint/
July 2, 2015