Daily Coping 5 Nov 2020

Posted on November 5, 2020 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to set a goal that links to your sense of purpose in life.

My purpose in life is to help others. I do this in a few ways, but one of them that I’ve been wanting to tackle is to find a new way to volunteer locally.

Today, I’m setting a reminder to take my volunteer day from Redgate this year and spend it with a local group.

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Redgate SQL Data Masker Refreshing Schema

Posted on November 4, 2020 by way0utwest

This is a quick blog to help me remember what is going on with the Data Masker product. This is for the SQL Server version, but I believe the Oracle one is very similar.

I added a new column to a table, and I had a masking plan already built. How do I get my masking plan to show the new column?

Here is my masking plan:

2020-10-27 10_56_12-simpletalk_5_prod_ Data Masker for SQL Server

I added a new column to the DCCheck table, which is under rule 01-0026.

2020-10-27 11_00_47-SQL Change Automation - Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

If I open that mask and add a new column, I get this, but I can’t expand the dropdown. All the columns in this table are masked, and data masker doesn’t know about the new one.

2020-10-27 10_57_23-Edit Substitution Rule

I need an updated schema, as the rules do not update in real time. To get this to work, I need to return to the masking plan and double click the controller at the top. This is the schema manager for my set of rules.

Note: If I mask different schemas, I need different controllers.

Once this opens, I can see my connection to a database. In my case, I’m building this in dev areas, so it’s pointed to the QA environment.

2020-10-27 10_57_50-Edit Rule Controller

If I click the “Tools” tab at the top, I see lots of options, one of which is to refresh.

2020-10-27 10_57_57-Edit Rule Controller

Once I pick that one, I have a bunch of more options, which gets confusing, but I can click the “refresh all tables” at the top, leaving everything alone. Once that’s done, I get a note.

2020-10-27 10_58_12-

Once I get this, I can return to my rule, and when I add a new column, and I see it listed.

2020-10-27 10_58_29-Edit Substitution Rule

This isn’t the smoothest flow, but data masker isn’t something that is likely to be in constant use. For many of us, adding new schema items is relatively rare, so we can adjust our plans as needed.

The one good thing is that I can easily find where I need to add a column, as opposed to digging through a number of .SQL scripts.

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Daily Coping 4 Nov 2020

Posted on November 4, 2020 by way0utwest

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here.

Today’s tip is to find a new perspective on a problem you face.

I’m struggling with some motivation lately. This is conference season, and even with the pandemic, it seems like I have no shortage of deadlines, but I also seem to be finding lots of content to watch. I find myself constantly inspired by seeing what others are doing with technology.

And yet, I am struggling to actually do something.

Mostly, while I dabble, I find myself struggling to focus and generate some feeling of accomplishment. Really, I feel like I’m not really getting anywhere with a huge variety of new things happening around me. I’m falling behind.

I bet many people feel the same way, but really, I am trying to turn this around. I am learning a few new things, and getting the chance to work with tools, and so I have turned my view. Rather than looking at the large group of things I’m missing, and what percentage I am not working with, I am trying to focus on the thing I am working on, and valuing the skills I do build.

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All In to the Cloud

Posted on November 3, 2020 by way0utwest

I was listening to the fall 2020 GroupBy conference recently and heard Gethyn Ellis note that he wasn’t aware of any companies that were over some age (a decade?), and that had made a 100% move to the cloud. The comment caught my eye, not because I haven’t felt the same way, but because I’d just heard from a company that surprised me.

During the DevOps Enterprise Summit recently, one of the keynotes was from Capital One. They are a 26 year old company that is focused on financial services, and they said that this year they are 100% in the cloud. They recently shut down their last data center. For a highly regulated company, and one that’s not a startup, that is impressive.

Almost all customers that I talk with are looking at the cloud in some sense. They might not be looking to move their biggest or most important applications, or even a majority, but they are often looking to hedge their bets, while they continue depreciating or using their on-premises assets for some period of time.

Not so with Capital One. They have heavily embraced DevOps, flexibility and rapid change in a way that had them open their 8th data center in 2014, only to pivot and look to eliminate that part of their infrastructure. They believe there is sufficient capability, reliability, and perhaps most importantly, security, in the cloud providers. They’ve embraced cloud-first, after an initial lift-and-shift approach for their thousands of systems.

I don’t know that most companies need to move in this direction, but this does show it is possible, and no matter what your concerns are, there are models of enterprises that have found ways to take advantage of the cloud and that you can look to emulate..

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

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