Voice of the DBA

Tag: DevOps

  • The Power of Git–Getting Code

    I find git to be incredibly useful, and this is a quick example of one of the ways that this matters to me.

    This post is also available in video format here: https://youtu.be/Drwt6nseeJM

    I got this link from Jes Pomfret for a Jupyter notebook she’d built: https://github.com/jpomfret/demos/blob/master/Notebooks/dbatoolsMorningChecklist.ipynb

    I see this on GitHub, but this isn’t easy to download, though this could have just been a file share.

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    However, since it’s on Github, I can easily get this as a copy of code that stays updated. To do this, I’ll copy, or “clone” the code to my machine.

    First, I go to the root of the repository, which is really a folder of code. This is the “demos” repo in this case (https://github.com/jpomfret/demos)

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    There’s a large green button on the right, that is the Clone button. Click the clone button and copy the URL.

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    I’ll do this in a cmd prompt, though you could use the open in GitHub desktop, or any git client. I prefer the cmdline, because this is really how I learn and get used to doing automation. GUI tools make this easy, but the cmdline is what I want to remain familiar with for DevOps. I can clone this with easy code:

    git clone https://github.com/jpomfret/demos.git

    You can see the results here.

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    I have all this code now on my machine. I can open this notebook in Azure Data Studio (ADS). Here I’ve picked “Open File” in ADS and browsed to the folder.

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    And I see the notebook.

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    If I don’t like this, or want to get rid of it, I delete the folder.

    rmdir demos /s

    And the code is gone.

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    There’s more to this, because I can keep the code up to date with Jes’ changes or even copy the code to my own workspace on Github and keep it up to date there with my machines, or share with others.

    There’s a lot of power to Git, and you can easily get started by doing what I did here and testing Jes’ notebook. Install git today and try this out for yourself.

  • A Data Controversy

    Quite a bit has changed since this article about airlines and the US government.  Since very few people are flying, or even can fly, perhaps this disagreement is moot, but I bet it comes up again. Now, separate from the idea of the actual disagreement here, there is an interesting discussion about the data involved here. In short, the US government wants airlines to collect data about passengers to help track the COVID-19 virus. Airline executives say they can’t easily get this data, other than on paper, without spending a few months on development.

    Certainly having a way to gather additional information in a digital form can require some development work. There are all sorts of software decisions to be made about when, where, and how users might input information. We have mobile devices, kiosks, laptops, and more, all of which might require separate interfaces for software changes. There is also the testing, validation, and verification we want to ensure the software works well and doesn’t introduce instability.

    In today’s world, with growing legislation, there is also a question of privacy. These requests may or may not conflict with other laws that airlines are bound by. There is likely to be more conflict here as the world changes and laws are slow to change and converge in some type of consistency. Rapidly changing requirements, as have been pushed during the COVID-19 pandemic, can potentially put us technical people in a difficult position. We have to balance the urgency of meeting requirements with the potential liability of violating privacy. I’d hope we could find some balance there, especially in a crisis.

    We do need to be flexible and ready to adapt to changing requirements. If regulations change, our organizations ought to be able to prioritize these changes and rapidly deploy them. In today’s world, where many high performing DevOps companies can get new software out in hours or days, governments may expect large companies to be prepared to follow suit. In that case, especially where new data is needed, having a software development process that includes the database is critical.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

  • DevOps Deja Vu with Oracle

    While I was out on sabbatical, I took a two day break to attend an Oracle conference and speak. The Rocky Mountain Oracle User Group Training Days 2020 was held a week ago a little North of Denver and I was there to speak about DevOps.

    In many ways, this was similar to the talks and discussions I’ve had with SQL Server developers and DBAs across the last seven or eight years. What was different, and fascinating, is that most of the Oracle people were in the place that lots of you SQL Server people were about 3-4 years ago.

    Not that we’re all in the same place, but between the work I’ve done with Redgate and the messages from Microsoft, many SQL Server users get the idea of better development and now are trying to work out the mechanics of implementing things. In the Oracle world it seems that many people are still trying to decide if they should change any development practices and what options are out there.

    It wasn’t just me. I watched 3 other DevOps talks and they all were similar. The message was more on what DevOps can mean and how it changes your work building software. In the MS world, we’re more often focused on the mechanics of specific ways to move to a more DevOps style work environment.

    Redgate is moving to release more tools for Oracle and other platforms, and we’re evolving the way we build these tools to help more groups. I’m looking forward to spending more time with Oracle procs and brushing up a little on my PL/SQL skills.

  • Get the 2020 State of Database DevOps Report

    It’s live and available. You can download the report now and see how your software development might compare with others, and even get a few hints on what your organization might try to produce better software today.