Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

  • Planning

    I made it to the UK on a very smooth, uneventful, on-time trip. That’s just what I like when traveling. After arriving at Heathrow and traveling to Cambridge, I arrived at the Red Gate office just in time for lunch. A fortuitous event as I was hungry after flying all night.

    Most of my afternoon was meeting with various product groups talking about planned enhancements and changes and how these items might benefit DBAs in the field. Grant and I are usually called on for sanity checks on thoughts, ideas, and plans.

    It’s interesting to discuss with product groups how and why they want to make changes. I can’t talk about specifics, but hearing from developers and project managers is always interesting to me. We see the world differently and it’s good to give feedback on products that can make a DBA’s job easier. I haven’t always had the chance to do that, but when I do, it’s a growing experience to hear how a vendor sees the world.

    I wrote about this recently, and a few disagreed, thinking that Microsoft doesn’t listen to them. I disagreed then, and I still do. I get an opinion at Red Gate, and with Microsoft. I don’t get to make a decision, or even much of a vote, but I do get to voice my opinion. Just because it isn’t followed doesn’t mean that someone didn’t listen.

    I don’t know to what extent my thoughts will influence the products, but I did see and discuss things with a variety of people in different departments, and the discussions evolved, so I know my opinion is heard. Whether it changes things remains to be seen.

  • Back Across the Water

    Another trip to the UK this week, with me leaving today for Cambridge and meetings at Red Gate Software. This will be my third trip this year, a record for me, and also the most travel I’ve done in a year.

    We are doing some planning for 2013, for the community and various events that Red Gate is a part of each year. We’ve supported user groups, SQL Saturdays, various conferences and our own SQL in the City events. Our goal is to interact with the community and learn things about how people use our software, as well as promote it, but also to educate data professionals. We want to turn a profit, but we also want to be a part of the community and support it where we can.

    I wish I could say that I’ll travel less next year, but I’m not sure that’s the case. We are looking to more effectively provide support, with more value for the money we spend, but I suspect that will mean more travel for Grant Fritchey and myself.

    We’ll see what happens, and we’ll likely start booking some events in 2013 soon. If you have ideas, suggestions, or requests, please feel free to post something here or send an email to communities@red-gate.com.

  • On Source Control

    A mention today from Jamie Thomson in his blog on source control. I left a comment, but it was long, so I thought I’d repost it here.

    My comment

    Thanks for the note, Jamie, and it’s interesting, but I don’t see any respondents that aren’t using VSC. I’m guessing many people don’t want to admit that.

    I use source control, sort of. I don’t have a lot of production code, mostly demo stuff, which doesn’t change so much as gets scrapped and restarted. However I am using Subversion (Turtle interface) with Red Gate’s SQL Source Control (of course).

    Why? Well, since I have a 1:1 with my boss today, I should mention Red Gate makes a fantastic product that I couldn’t do without. Actually I think I’m bound to use it since I work for Red gate, but even if I didn’t, it makes things easier.

    I built this habit at a startup, with Visual SourceSafe, and 6 months of browbeating developers to actually check out code from VSS, do a File | Open in Enterprise Manager (SQL 2k at the time), make changes, save the code, and check it back in. It can be done manually, and should, but there are tools like Red Gate’s products that make it easier.

    I know lots of people just edit code in SSMS/VS without controlling it, and that’s a mistake if you are trying to work in a team environment, and product quality software. I haven’t had to roll back often, but there are times we have needed to, and not having control was an issue.

    As an anecdote, I had a job once, waaaayyy back in the last century, using SQL 6.5. The developers had done a great job of using source control for all ASP, VB6, and SQL code. The problem was that they had checked out the code, saved it locally, copied it to another folder, and then checked it in. Then they might check back in the original script that was checked out. Or they might check the original back in and forget the modified version. Or they might not check anything in.

    We found 3, 4, even 7 copies of some stored procedures on various desktops and shared drives, and they had decided to encrypt all the code on the SQL Server. We were never quite sure what version was deployed where, and deployments of the "latest" versions from VSC broke functionality.

    We ended up decrypting all code, and reloading it into VCS, while removing all copies of local storage. It isn’t enough just to use source control or implement something; you need to understand what you are doing and do it consistently. Tools help here, so please use something.

    A Couple More Thoughts

    Source control is insurance. It’s risk reduction, but something that most people don’t understand or think they need. They may not. If you never have a server crash, or a hack of your data, then you don’t need backups. However most people wouldn’t want to run their systems, especially the ones they care about, without backups.

    It’s the same with source control. Use something to provide yourself with a fallback if you have issues.

    It’s not hard, there are lots of tools out there, and they make it easy to conform to some process. You can use SQL Source Control or SQL Connect from my company, or use something else, but integrate your database code with source control.

  • Thirteen Years Old

    A very cool shot of our company at 13.

    redgate13

    I first heard of Red Gate back in 2001 and they were our first advertising customer at SQLServerCentral.

    A few years ago they bought the company and I now work for them. It’s a great company, and a fun one. Things like this are very cool, and while a little corny, are a nice way to celebrate a minor milestone.

    I wish I was closer to the office for things like this.