Voice of the DBA

Category: Presentations

  • Who’s Touching My Database

    Abstract:

    As databases become more critical to the operation of our organizations, we are being asked to audit and report on access to both data and the configuration of our systems. SQL Server has a number of features that can help you comprehensively audit your system, including SQL Audit, Extended Events and the default trace. Come learn how you can configure and incorporate detailed auditing into your reporting to management.

    Level: 200 – Should have some basic knowledge of SQL Server, database security, and T-SQL.

    Demos:

    • Using Logon Triggers
    • Looking at the default trace
    • Using SQL Audit to track logins
    • Using Extended Events to track logins
    • Checking permissions at the server and database level
    • Watching database activity using DML triggers
    • Watching database activity using SQL Audit
    • Watching database activity using Extended Events

    Downloads:

  • Bringing DevOps to the Database

    Abstract:

    DevOps is a hot topic in today’s software development world. However most of the knowledge and experience with DevOps is based around application software and ignores the database. We will examine how the concepts and principles of DevOps can be applied to database development by looking at both automated comparison analysis as well as migration script management. Automated building, testing, and deployment of database changes will be shown.

    Level: 200 – Not to technical, but you should have some idea of how software development works to get something out of this talk.

    Goals:

    1. Conceptually understand how DevOps principles can easily be applied to the database in either state based or migrations based changes.
    2. Learn how databases can be automatically built and tested in a CI/CD environment
    3. Understand how database releases can be automated, but are different than those deployment/releases made for other software.

    Demos:

    This presentation has a few demos where I show how I stored database code in a VCS, perform an automated build, and use a scripted release process to move code from one database to the next. The demos are pre-built, so I just show how they work. I can do this with:

    • git, VSTS Build and VSTS Release
    • git or SVN, Team City, and Octopus Deploy

    Downloads:

    There are a few versions, as this talk has evolved.

    GroupBy – Bringing DevOps to the Database Groupby.pptx

    Live!360/VSLive – VSLive-Orlando 2016.pptx

    SQL Saturday Cambridge – Bringing DevOps to the Database.pptx

  • Testing T-SQL Made Easy

    Abstract:

    Everyone tests that code, but most people run a query, execute a procedure and run another query. This ad hoc, non-repeatable testing isn’t reliable, and encourages regression bugs. In this session you will learn how to begin introducing testing into your development process using the proven tSQLt framework. You’ll run tests with a click of a button, using an ever growing test suite that improves code quality. You will see how to handle test data, exceptions, and edge cases.

    Level: 200 (I am assuming you know something about unit testing and tSQLt)

    Demos:

    • Creating exceptions to standards
    • Catching changes to large tables
    • Ensuring the join works correctly
    • Testing Getdate()
    • Isolating functions and stored procedures from other calls
    • Checking boundary conditions

    Downloads:

    Powerpoint: Testing T-SQL Made Easy.pptx

    Code: .zip file or Github repo

    Presentations

    • SQL Bits XV – May 7, 2016

  • Getting Started with Encryption in SQL Server 2016

    The release of SQL Server 2016 gives developers a number of ways in which they can securely encrypt and protect their data. In this introductory session, you will learn about the encryption options in SQL Server 2016, watching Always Encrypted, TDE, Row Level Security, Dynamic Data Masking, and server side column encryption can secure and protect your data from unauthorized users.

    Length: 60-75 minutes

    Code: Github

    Powerpoint deck: Getting Started with Encryption in SQL 2016.pptx