Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

The Book of Redgate:A Prehistory

I’ve covered the values in a number of previous posts on the Book of Redgate. Those values came from our founders, Simon Galbraith and Neil Davidson. I am lucky enough, and honored to have known these gentlemen for many years and had the chance to sit and chat with them throughout my time at Redgate. Simon and I still get together periodically even today after 25 years.

In the Book of Redgate, there’s a section about prehistory. In it, there’s this picture and text. Neil and Simon have known each other since they were sixteen, starting a business together after they spent time at university.

Neil stepped away from the company many years ago, for a variety of reasons, and he remained on the board for many years. Simon continued as CEO for a long time and stepped down right after the pandemic. He remains on the board today.

The thing that caught my eye is that they worked together from their 20s until their 40s. I still remember their joint 40th birthday party at the old Redgate office. How many people have you worked with for 20 years?

How many of you have worked for an organization for 20 years?

I guess I’ve worked for SQL Server Central for 25 years, but only some of those were me working for myself. I’ve been with Redgate almost 20 years as a contractor and employee, but I haven’t spent 20 years with anyone outside of my family and Andy Warren.

He and I still talk most weeks, even though we’re not in business together anymore.

Redgate has remained a strong brand and presence in my life and that of many others. Part of that is the longevity of so many employees. We’ve had some ups and downs, but relatively few turnover over the years. More recently, especially in sales, but there are a lot of people who have worked there for more than 10 years.

That’s still amazing to me.

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.

October 2, 2026
Flyway Tips: Object History

It’s a small change, but a handy one. Flyway Desktop (FWD) now includes the object history for different schema changes, so as you are evaluating how your changes might fit in with others, or you are trying to determine where something broke, you can see a list of historical changes. This post looks at checking history quickly in FWD.

I’ve been working with Flyway and Flyway Desktop and helping customers improve their database development. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

Checking History

In Flyway Deskop, I can see all of my objects on the Schema Model tab on the right side. Here I’ve selected CustProc in the list, and at the bottom I see the current version of the code. However, if you look where my cursor is, there’s a small clock there.

If I click this, I see a blade pop out with history. On the left, I see the various versions. At the top, I have the uncommitted change I just saved. This is shown as the older version on the left, which is committed in Git. My new changes are on the right, with green shading to highlight what I’ve changed in code.

However, maybe I wonder what was the previous change. If I click the top commit (c398a9d), I see this view. Note the red shading on the left, which are the columns I removed. I also have the green shading on the right, where I’ve added a comment and removed a comma. My commit message is at the top with my name and the time (upper right).

I can flip through the various history iterations of code here, just as I did with Git, but I can do this while I’m doing development work in the same place I’ve capturing changes.

I have a “go to Version Control at the top as well, which opens the VCS tab. Here I can commit the change.

Once I do that, my change appears as a new commit for this object in the history.

AI Sparkle

It can be easy to sometimes see the changes made by a developer and understand them. However, sometimes there are complex changes, or you don’t notice something. Here I’ve got a more complex object history.

In the upper right, there’s an AI sparkle next to the “Explain this change”. If I click that, and have AI features enabled, I get an explanation. I’ve zoomed in to see this at the top.

This is a summary of the changes, which in the chaos of work, can be helpful. I get a quick summary.

I wouldn’t just trust this, but instead this guides me along the code to look at what’s been removed and added, and this summary helps me double check that the code does this, and that I understand it.

Summary

This a small improvement, but one that keeps you focused on the work: what changed. No hunting down the changes in Git or changing somewhere else. This also is easier to see than a git diff for me. It also gives me a quick summary where there are a lot of changes.

If you work with Flyway, update your desktop and give it a try. We would love to hear your feedback.

Flyway is an incredible way of deploying changes from one database to another, and now includes both migration-based and state-based deployments. You get the flexibility you need to control database changes in your environment. If you’ve never used it, give it a try today. It works for SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL and nearly 50 other platforms.

Video Walkthrough

Watch me do this in video:

September 28, 2026
The Book of Redgate: Hours

I have said and written this many times: Redgate Software is the type of company I’d want to build if I founded another company. It’s a great place, and one of the things I appreciate is that we value outcomes.

One of our values is:

.

The text on the next page continues the sentence:

What you achieve is more important than how long it takes.

Building software is challenging, and building software that can be sold is difficult. We’ve had lots of successes and some not-successes. However, we work towards building the software and celebrate the achievements.

However.

If you’ve built software, you know it usually takes longer than expected and people want it sooner. Many teams know me as the “do it faster” guy. I know software takes time, but I also know that in the business of selling software, we need focus on things that are useful and valued by customers.

I don’t complain that it takes too long to build everything, but I do press on the focus to get the important things done first, which aren’t always the fun or easy things.

Ultimately we as a company appreciate when we have something done and working for customers. We don’t go back and lessen the importance of the effort because of the time it took. We do look to see if we can do better in the future, which is something I’d hope most software engineers would 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.

September 11, 2026
Monday Monitor Tips: Configuring Access to the MCP Server
I have been experimenting with MCP servers in a few ways, including the Redgate Monitor MCP Server. It took me a few tries, and some help from engineers to get connected. I’ll cover how I did this in Claude and Visual Studio Code in this post, and try to warn you about a few places I made mistakes.

This is part of a series of posts on Redgate Monitor. Click to see the other posts.

Creating A Token

I’m not going to bore you with the setup and configuration of the Redgate Monitor instance. That procedure might change by release, so I’ll assume you’ve got the MCP server enabled.

To access the MCP server, you need to give your AI agent a token. This authorizes the MCP server to connect to Redgate Monitor and read data. These are read only tokens, and designed for the MCP and the tools that are available.

In the configuration, there is an Access Tokens area. Click here.

Click Create Token on the next screen. This is in the upper right.

On the next screen, give your token a name, description, and set an expiration date. The default is one year.

Make sure you select the MCP type. I messed this up the first time.

Below this, pick the servers the MCP token can access. I’ve selected just the Production serer group, but you can set this as needed. I’d make sure the name and/or description lets you know what can be accessed.

You will get a review screen, to verify what you’ve done. Accept that and you’ll get a dialog with the token value. Make sure you save this securely somewhere.

Once you’ve created this, it’s in a list, and you can click the “view details, which shows you what the token can access, as you can see below. You cannot get the token itself anymore.

Configuring VS Code

I’m going to show this working in VS Code. I opened the Command Palette and selected the MCP: Open User Configuration, as shown.

Inside the config, I pasted this inside the “servers” key. This should be a sub element, and this goes alongside any other MCP servers.:
```
"redgate-monitor": {
  
 "type": "http",
  
 "url": "https://<your-monitor-host>/mcp",

 "headers": {
  
 "Authorization": "Bearer ${input:redgate-mcp-token}"

 }

 }
```
Then inside the “inputs” key, add this:
```
{

 "id": "redgate-mcp-token",

 "type": "promptString",

 "description": "Redgate Monitor MCP token",

 "password": true

 }
```
The save this. When you start the MCP server, it will ask you for your token. Paste the value in and then you should connect. You do this from the MCP: List Servers item in the command palette. This should give you output like this, with a connection message and tools discovered:

If I open a chat, and add the MCP as a tool, I can ask questions. Here’s a question I asked and the initial responses from the LLM.

Once this is done, I’ll get a list of the alerts. I did approve some PoSh commands where the LLM stored results from Redgate monitor and then tried to process those after writing them to a temp file.

\

This is the raw LLM trying to use tools and fumbling around. With a few skills and guidance, this will run smoother, quicker, and more efficiently in your environment.

Summary

The Redgate Monitor MCP server is a great way to start using AI to analyze all the data in your database estate that Redgate Monitor collects. There were 7 tools when I started, but within a few weeks there were 11. By the time you read this, there are likely going to be even more.

Give Redgate Monitor a try and learn how to use MCP servers to link your LLM to Redgate Monitor and start analyzing systems in a more natural manner.

Redgate Monitor is a world-class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.
August 24, 2026