Speaking at SQL Saturday Austin 2025

Posted on April 29, 2025 by way0utwest

SQL Saturday Austin 2025 is in just a few days. I am honored to be speaking there, and glad to be going back. I’ve missed a number of the Austin events with schedule conflicts, but things worked out well this year, and I’ll be at the event.

The schedule is out and it’s packed with some great sessions. I’ll be talking about zero downtime deployments, but there are some other nice ones:

  • MS Fabric and SQL from Bob Ward
  • AI for the data professional from Ginger Grant
  • SQL DBs in Fabric for Dashboards and Marts from Joey D’Antoni
  • Defending against Ransomware from Jeff Iannucci

and plenty more. I’m sad to miss Conor Cunningham’s talk, but we’re at the same time.

There’s also a Pre-con on Friday about Fabric if you want to attend. It’s a great chance to get very reasonable training at a low cost.

If you’re anywhere near Austin, some out this Saturday and join us for a great day of learning.

Now I’m off to pack as I leave tomorrow to head to the Redgate office in Austin for the rest of the week before the big event.

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Updating SSMS is Easy (w/ v21)

Posted on April 28, 2025 by way0utwest

I’ve been using the SSMS preview for v21. This is the next evolution of SSMS, where the VS shell is finally being updated. For many of us, SSMS has been using an old version of the Visual Studio shell as its basis for development. It’s a locked down version, which is limited what’s possible in SSMS. Redgate and a few other companies have hacked in tools like SQL Prompt and SQL Source Control, but the number of extensions.

In any case, this post looks at the upgrade to preview 6. I was on 4 on this machine, and I noticed a message when (returned home and ) started SSMS.

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Just like v19 and v20, this appears in the lower right corner. However, in this case, it’s showing a VS 2022 update.

When I click the update on close, and close SSMS, I see a UAC dialog and then the VS Installer. The download and install starts right away, in the same way that any VS update comes down.

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When this finishes, no download, nothing for me to do, I see things updated.

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And I’m updated. When I started, I got the question about testing the new connection dialog, which I agreed to, but forgot to screenshot. In any case, I can now do more testing with this new version to be sure it’s working well.

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Is SQL Server Feature Complete?

Posted on April 28, 2025 by way0utwest

I heard Brent Ozar recently talked a bit about the SQL Server platform and its future. He also mentioned that Fabric has distracted the data platform team and it isn’t a great product. I tend to agree, and I see too many bugs, holes, and problems. However at the end of this short snippet, he talks about SQL Server with an interesting comment.

Is SQL Server feature complete?

That was Brent’s opinion, which is one that I tend to share. I think that the platform is very feature-complete. There aren’t a lot of things I think I really need in order to choose SQL Server as my database. I wish some functions (FORMAT, MERGE) ran faster, and there are a few items (AGs, replication) that could be easier to work with or were more robust under load. However, overall, SQL Server runs well.

It’s a good choice, there is mature tooling available to help, it’s well understood, easy to administer for the most part, and there are lots of people that have experience on the platform. There are ample reasons to choose SQL Server as a solid relational database platform.

At the same time, if the product is feature complete, then that gives PostgreSQL, MySQL, and assorted other platforms a target to aim for and potentially displace workloads at a lower cost. Even if the features aren’t quite the same, a much lower cost can be enticing.

That ignores the cost, often a very high cost, of switching platforms. However, I do see plenty of people investigating other platforms, not to migrate or move, but for new work. That makes sense, and I suspect that is part of the reason that Microsoft keeps trying to raise the bar with new features. I’d prefer they focus more on stability and performance than new stuff, but I get that doesn’t always sell well.

Are you happy with SQL Server? Looking elsewhere? Ready to learn a few platform? Let us know today.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

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The Book of Redgate: Customer Quotes

Posted on April 25, 2025 by way0utwest

Many organizations list customer testimonials and quotes on their websites or literature. It makes sense to show off those places where you’ve done well in hopes of influencing others to do business with you. We seek this out, and while we get a lot at Redgate, they take effort to put together.

I was surprised to find some of these in the Book of Redgate. After all, this was an internal publication for the employees. We don’t need customer referrals.

And yet, seeing these quotes brings me some pride. I’d hope most employees felt that way, but here are a few samples:

“I raised an issue with Redgate regarding functionality in their SQL Compare product … and a couple of months later the items identified had been rewritten”

“Whenever I show people any Redgate software, it’s like they just escaped from communist Russia and have a new life to live.”

“SQL Data Generator has overnight become the principal tool we use for loading test data to run our performance and load tests”

That last one is from Grant, before he joined us as an employee.

There are many more, and I recently saw a large spreadsheet of quotes from customers that we can use externally. It’s amazing how many people love our tools and have benefitted from them.

It’s nice to work in a successful and profitable business, but it’s really motivating when so many of our customers appreciate what we do.

I have a copy of the Book of Redgate from 2010. This was a book we produced internally about the company after 10 years in existence. At that time, I’d been there for about 3 years, and it was interesting to learn a some things about the company. This series of posts looks back at the Book of Redgate 15 years later.

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