Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

SQL Prompt Prevents Stupidity

I work for Redgate and write about products. I’ve got a series of SQL Prompt posts here on little things I like. SQL Prompt might be my favorite tool. SQL Prompt will be yours as well if you give it a try.

I upgraded my SQL Prompt recently, mostly as a habit. The team led by David and Aaron are always adding cool new features, and have almost never broken my flow, so I usually take the changes they’ve made whenever they appear. In this case, I got an unexpected surprise.

While demoing some tSQLt stuff, I wanted to show how to install the framework. I loaded the tsqlt.class.sql file and clicked Execute. What I saw was this:

In the middle of my SSMS window was a warning. I’ve got multiple items without WHERE clauses in the script. There are deletes, and in this case they don’t matter. However I got a warning. I could stop execution or execute.

This made me pause in front of the audience for 10 seconds while I read it, but I clicked “Execute anyway”, things worked, and I went on.

However, that was cool.

I tried this in other ways. Suppose I had an UPDATE without a WHERE.

Same warning. That’s a good one. What if I highlighted just part of a script?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this in a presentation. Or in production, where it’s happened a few times. I could turn off the warning, but I love it. This is exactly what I need to prevent me from doing something stupid that I didn’t mean to do.

If I want to clear a table, and sometimes I do in demos, I click “Execute”. However, if I’ve made a mistake, I just hit enter, take the default, and then fix things.

I love SQL Prompt, and it’s one of my favorite tools from Redgate. I also love the development process, with the team working against submissions and requests from users, and responding with small releases hundreds of times a year.

If you’ve got SQL Prompt, be sure you update to v7.2. If not, then download it and give it a try. I think if you spend a good two weeks working with it, customizing snippets, and practicing some of they keystrokes, you’ll love it as well.

You can see a complete list of SQL Prompt tips at Redgate.

June 9, 2016
SQL Compare 12 Beta

SQL Compare is a core product from Redgate and I’ve got a series on some of the interesting things I’ve found. Download a trial today if you haven’t tried it.

The Beta is out. I’ve been waiting for this, and was glad to see Carly’s post on the product. I’ve been involved in looking at some early designs and functionality, and have been waiting for the product to get to the point I could play with it more.

Be sure you grab the beta if you like Compare, give it a try, and send us feedback. We really try to be responsive as a company, and certainly want Compare and Data Compare to be the best products out there.

New Look and Feel

Redgate has been looking to get a new look and simpler designs as a company. You can see that with the SQL Compare installer.

The icons have changed, but that’s not all. When you run SQL Compare, you notice this right away.

Once you select the items to compare, you see a familiar connection dialog.

If I compare, I see various results. In this case, I’ve got two demo databases in two different stages. Each has objects the other doesn’t, and I can get a cleaner (IMHO) view of the objects.

There are plenty of SQL Server 2016 enhancements, a few bug fixes, and lots of look and feel changes. There’s still some work to do, but we’re confident this version is ready to show. Let us know how the product works for you and what you’d like to see changed.

June 6, 2016
The Lighter Side–Morning at the Redgate Office

I was chatting recently with someone about the coffee machines at Redgate Software. We have 4 of them, all located in the downstairs lobby, which provide a way for people to take a break from their desk or between meetings, and wander down for a cup.

They are great machines, and I show some video recently to share with a few friends,

I visit this machine often when I’m in the office, going between lattes and black coffee throughout the day.

May 30, 2016
The New Global Dashboard

Redgate recently released SQL Monitor 5.2, which is the latest upgrade to our monitoring/alerting/troubleshooting product for DBAs. This was the big change that the team has spent a lot of time developing and refining. It’s been available for a few weeks as a hidden URL, but with 5.2, this becomes the default main screen for SQL Monitor.

I think it’s a good move forward. In general, I don’t like things moving around physically in applications, as I get used to them being in a certain spot, or I expect them. However in this case, it makes sense.

In a dashboard for monitoring and alerting, you want to know what’s broken. Having a list of 20 servers at the top, and 1 broken one potentially “beneath the fold” (in newspaper parlance) and requiring scrolling would be bad. As a DBA, I’d want to see those items that are problematic. When I look at the monitor.red-gate.com site, I see:

The cluster has a long running query, which is an active, high priority alert. If I were to clear this, along with the other active alerts, this “card” would move to the end, and the sm-cluster2 item would take the top left spot.

Note there are options to configure what is a high or low priority, and even pin specific servers at the top, but the general behavior is to let you know what’s broken now.

There’s one other cool feature in this. If I have a high level alert, like a machine unreachable, and the alert clears itself (the machine reboots), I may see the machine as “green” on the dashboard when I login. This is because current alerts are shown, not historical ones. I can still get the historical data, but the intention is to make this a responsive tool for right now, not last night.

I think this is a great change, and I’m excited to see how well it works in practice as customers roll this out.

May 13, 2016