Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

Speaking at the NYC Lunch and Learn–May 23
In a couple of weeks, I’ll be in New York City for the Redgate DevOps Devour Hour Lunch and Learn. This is at the Industrious office at 730 3rd Avenue, which is a neat location near the tip of Manhattan.

This is a half day event, from 12-430, with a short happy hour afterwards. I’ll be there, along with Kendra Little and Erik Darling, talking a variety of different topics.
- The SQL Server Performance Tasting Menu – Erik
- A Tale of Two Clouds: What I Learned from Migrating from Azure SQL MI to Amazon RDS for SQL Server – Kendra
- Designing Zero Downtime Database Deployments – me
I’m excited to head back to NYC, which is always a fun trip for me. Even more exciting, Erik and Kendra are people who always get me to think with their views of how to work with databases effectively.

My session will be a mix of tech demos and tips/tricks on how to better make changes to your database systems without interrupting customers.

You can register today and I’ll see you in a few weeks.
May 7, 2025
DevOps Day – Atlanta

No tour this year, but Redgate does have a few DevOps events scheduled. I’m hoping for more, and the first one for me this year is Atlanta. You can register for the DevOps Day Atlanta Workshop on May 15, just a few weeks away.

I’ll be there to set the stage and give a high level view of how Redgate approaches better database code management and deployment with Flyway. We’ll also have a whiteboarding session if you have questions to solve some architectural challenges.

If you can make it, please register today and come enjoy a day with us.

May 1, 2025
The Book of Redgate: Customer Quotes

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.

April 25, 2025
Monday Monitor Tips: Finding the Hostname for Queries

I was chatting with a customer recently and they wanted to know which host was sending in queries that were causing problems in real time. This post looks at where you can find the hostname for running queries, which is in two places.

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

The Server Overview

There are two places where you can see the host name. From the server overview, you can go to the current activity, or the new Query Executions tab in preview.

Current Activity

In the server overview, there is a lot of data, but most people scroll down to see the list of queries, such as this list from the ssc-db-n3 instance.

There is the database and lots of data, but no hostname. The reason is that these are aggregates. Each of these queries has run many times, possibly from different hosts. This is a historical view.

The better way to look for details on certain problem queries now is to look for current activity. I’ve zoomed in and highlighted this item below.

If I click that, I get an sp_who, or sp_whoisActive view of the server, and I can see the logins listed here. That’s helpful.

Still no hostname, but if I pick a query from a login, and see the details, I see this view.

In the lower left corner, I get the hostname. I’ve zoomed in below.

We could add that in the main box, but we’re trying to surface the most important info, and for most of our customers, that isn’t the hostname. However, we have added it in the detail.

If you’re like it in the main box, or would like to choose which fields are there (maybe host and not program?), send us a note to your rep or to sales@red-gate.com.

Query Executions

For some of our servers, we have a new Query Executions tab that uses Extended Events to get some data. The Workload02 system has this enabled. You can see the tab at the top, and then the view of this below.

If I zoom in to the lower right, you can see the hostname as part of the details for query executions, along with other data. As you are examining the details of those queries which have run for over 5 seconds, you can get the metadata about the host, application, and more.

Summary

Hostnames are available, you just need to learn where to look. Hence this post. Hopefully this gives you a quick tip on how to find them.

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.

April 21, 2025