Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

SWAG Saves the Day

PASS Summit East is in one week.

I was on the road last week in the UK and then Houston for the Houston AI-lytics event. I had been a little under the weather all week, and when I arrived in Houston, I decided to stay in the hotel and rest. Plus the 6:00 arrival was midnight for my body.

I walked next door and got some takeout and then grabbed a beer from the hotel store to relax and get to sleep early. Unfortunately, the bottle needed an opened. Fortunately, I was prepared.

This little opener is a piece of swag I got from Redgate years ago and I’ve kept it in my bag for just such occasions. No walking back to the desk, no disappointment, just a handy item that let me relax and get to sleep by 8.

I don’t know what swag Redgate or others will have next week at the PASS Summit East 2026 in Chicago, but if you don’t go, you won’t know. Register for the event, book a flight, come join me.

Sure, you might get some just-in-time training from a precon that lets you learn about PostgreSQL from Grant and Pat or how to secure your estate from Andreas. Did you know Andreas did this job for Microsoft for years, architecting security features?

There are lots of sessions where you might get inspired by a demo or get a question answered about your environment. Those are great, but who knows what SWAG you’ll find. You might get a handy tool you didn’t expect that saves your day, or night.

Send yourself. Send a colleague.

Send someone today to learn a few things, connect with others, and collect some swag. Register for the PASS Summit East and join me in Chicago next week.

April 30, 2026
The Book of Redgate: Do the Right Things

I do believe that Redgate has been very customer focused since it’s inception. I’ve worked with them in some capacity since 2002 and I’ve felt this along the way:

The next page has this statement:

We believe that if we do what is right for our customers then we will thrive.

I think that’s been true when we keep this in mind. The (relatively) few times we’ve started to do things for ourselves rather than thinking about customers, things haven’t worked out as well.

I think this sentiment is one that guides a lot of my life. Certainly inside Redgate, but also in the rest of my life. If I do what is best for another, or the world, often that works out well. It doesn’t mean I’m as efficient, profitable, less stressed, or anything else as I could be.

But I’m happier and I thrive.

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 24, 2026
Monday Monitor Tips: Oracle Custom Metrics

One of the popular features of Redgate Monitor has been the ability to add custom mertics for various purposes. This has been popular, and along with our curated list at sqlmonitormetrics.com, it’s a feature that’s used by many.

It has been a SQL Server only function for awhile, but customers have requested other platforms. We’ve added the capability for Oracle and PostgreSQL.

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

Adding Custom Metrics

You can see on my custom metric config page that I have a few business metrics added. I recommend these to customers as often a business metric catches an issue before it appears in Perfmon type data. Let’s add a new metric. I’ll click the

I’ll click the “Add a custom metric on the right side” and will get a new form.

This form used to be mostly the same, but the “Choose where to collect data from” didn’t have a drop down. It only had the 1. Select instances and the 2. Select databases (to the right). This new drop down is where you pick the platform.

If I click the drop down, I see three choices: SQL Server, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.

I can select Oracle and my select database section disappears. This is because an instance and a database are the same thing in Oracle.

If I select PostgreSQL, I can still select databases.

The rest of the form works the same way. When I’ve selected Oracle, I get a default query listed that lets me know the structure of my result set. I need to return an integer with the con_id, a metric value that is a scalar and an optional string with details.

From there things work as they do with other metrics.

Summary

This post shows a new capability in Redgate Monitor for Oracle, where you can track your own data, as you see fit, and then let Redgate Monitor alert on changes, graph this over time, and help you better understand your system.

We are enhancing and adding to Redgate Monitor every week, but there are always more things that many of you want, and custom metrics give you the ability to choose what you want to monitor.

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 20, 2026
Changing the Cardinality of a FK in Redgate Data Modeler

One of the things a customer asked recently about Redgate Data Modeler was how to adjust a FK constraint between two tables. The tool seemed to makes this easy, and this post will show you how.

This is part of a series on Redgate Data Modeler.

Altering a Constraint

In a previous post, I looked at adding a FK. Let’s do things a little differently here. Let’s change a constraint to better reflect the relationships between entities. In this case, let’s look at a part of my model. I have the User and Author entities linked as shown below. Note that we have a User with a 1:many relationship to Author.

This isn’t correct. A User cannot be a part of multiple authors. This is, logically, a 1:1 relationship. Each Author is related to one and only one User. Each User can be an author, but only one Author. So let’s fix this.

If I click on the relationship, it turns blue and highlights.

On the right side, the properties pane displays the relationship properties. Note that there is a relationship type below the comment.

If I click the drop down, I can change this to whatever cardinality makes sense.

I’ll choose one to one. When I do that, I can see the diagram changes.

I can also change this for other entities. Here I have a One to Many, but this is really a many to many relationship. So I need to change it.

I can adjust the properties in the drop down and you can see both the diagram and the right properties pane match.

Summary

We may model our entities incorrectly, either because of incomplete information or simple mistakes. In any case, if you need to change cardinality in a relationship, it’s easy to do in the relationship properties.

Give Redgate Data Modeler a try and see if it helps you and your team get a handle on your database.

Video Walkthrough

Here’s a short video of my working with Redgate Data Modeler and changing cardinality.

April 13, 2026