Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

From Compass ’99 to Data Community Summit 2022

At this year’s Data Community Summit 2022, I am a part of the day 2 keynote. I’m excited to deliver some thoughts and memories of the event. I’m mostly excited the Summit still exists, and I am looking forward to seeing many of you in Seattle in person again. If you haven’t registered, think about it. This is the best place to meet other data professionals, network, and not only get knowledge from the experts, but ask them your question in person.

Someone brought to my attention the original event from PASS wasn’t the Summit, but was the Compass ’99 conference. I saw a recap of the event on the ITProToday site, which brought back memories. I had attended the event early in my career, convincing my boss that this data specific event would be good for both them and me. It was, and it led me to unfathomable success throughout my time working with databases, along with great personal joy. I also learned something that helped me solve a few problems at work.

I don’t remember Mr. Flessner delivering a keynote, but I do remember the late Jim Gray. He talked about storage costs and how we’d see the cost of a TB come under USD$10,000 in a few years. Today I see 1TB mobile phones for around $1000 and external drives for USD$20.

In the early years of attending the Summit, I spent time in sessions, taking notes, and learning everything I could. I’d ask questions of Microsoft developers and our community experts. I was then, and am still now, proud of how gracious speakers are, willing to take time to help others, and share knowledge with them.

However, the Summit has grown to encompass more than listening to speakers. While you can walk up to a speaker and ask them a question, the random conversations with others waiting their turn near the stage, or walking in the hallways, are the real benefit. I get inspired by what other attendees say. I learn things from them, and I get new perspectives that I might never think about. Whether in the convention center, on a #sqlrun, walking to a hotel, or even out socially at night. Talk usually revolves around data, databases, careers, and how we can grow ourselves as data professionals.

It might not even be technical knowledge. Someone might give you a thought on how to better communicate with others, how to tactfully point out a problem, or even how to find a different job. Perhaps you just get a sympathetic ear in which to vent your troubles and frustrations at work. That alone might help you recharge and go back to work feeling better the next week.

I’ve been blessed to attend most of the Summits, both in Seattle and around the US. I’ve been to conferences all over the world, and there is something special about the large data conferences, focused on the craft that we practice. We get the best and brightest in the world coming together to create synergies we get nowhere else. The #sqlfamily is on full display, with introductions taking place alongside greetings by name, handshakes, and no shortage of hugs.

It’s a little less than a month until the Summit. There is still time to register and join us, either in person or virtually. I recommend in-person as the benefits outside of the sessions far outweigh the travel costs. I’ve gotten knowledge to save my company far more than the cost of a flight and hotel. If you have a vexing problem, you might convince your boss that you could easily cover those costs by being able to troubleshoot on a whiteboard with Microsoft experts or industry gurus.

I hope to see you there, and please feel free to stop me for a handshake, hug, picture, or a short chat. If not this year, then somewhere in the future. In the meantime, I hope many of you are as excited as I am. Now, to work on that keynote…

Steve Jones

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November 2, 2022
Paid Flyway Advantages–Undo and Check

The Community edition of Flyway has some nice basic features, and it works well for many people. However, it requires you to do a lot of the heavy lifting of building and deploying scripts. There are some advantages of the paid editions, and one of those is the Undo and Baseline script additions in Flyway Desktop, which we’ll look at in this post.

This is part of a series of posts that looks at Flyway and the feature differences between editions.

Flyway Desktop

The GUI for Flyway is Flyway Desktop. This works for all editions, though some features are not visible when you aren’t licensed for them. Here is the GUI we see the Flyway Community. Note there really is only one thing, which is a list of migrations.

This is useful, and it’s certainly nicer than Explorer. Plus, I can see what is run on a particular instance if I add one.

If I look at my Flyway commands, I see this:

This lets me do the basics of what a script runner does. I can follow a simple, happy path with this functionality.

Teams

Flyway Teams is the mid-tier, and this adds a few nice things. In this case, I now see objects changed in the schema, and I get version control. Both valuable tools.

However, for the Flyway functionality, I also get Undo and Baseline, both things that I do often.

The undo is huge, as there are times I need to get rid of something, or fix a script. Hopefully not in production, but definitely in dev and test.

I can also dry run and see the script that will get executed here, something I’ve always wanted to do as a DBA.

Enterprise

The really useful tier is Enterprise. I know it’s pricey, but it also does the things I really need most in a mixed team of different skill levels.

I get the Generate capability, which really automates the things from SQL Compare that hundreds of thousands of you have found valuable.

I also get the Check command, which lets me look for potential problems.

They All Work

All tiers work, but the paid versions save you time and handle more of the work for you. If you have a team of gurus, you might like Community, but if your staff could use some help, think about trying the paid editions.

October 31, 2022
The Redgate 100

The Redgate 100 is a list of 100 people that are influential in the database world in a number of categories.I made the list in a few places, which is pretty cool.

Disclosure: I do work for Redgate as an advocate, and I helped with some discussion of the list and nominations. I didn’t pick the list, vote, or make decisions.

This is a marketing effort, as are many of the “best of” awards and notices you see out there. In many case, those are often paid placement, as I’ve been offered the chance to be on those lists if I paid a fee. I always decline, or at least to date I have.

In this case, Redgate are in the business of database software and tools. We sell them, but we also support a lot of community efforts as well as are constantly researching to better understand what people need and want. Sometimes we build products in those areas, sometimes we just publish research results.

In any case, I thought this was a pretty neat idea and a great list. You can read about the selection process, which doesn’t tell a lot, other than they took some nominations, calculated some score based on what people do in the community.

While Kathi, Grant, and I work for Redgate and are on the list, part of the reason why we work for Redgate is that we do a lot in and for the community. I could say the same for Kendra who used to work for us, and if we’d have done this list before we were hired, I think we’d have been on it anyway.

This doesn’t imply that everyone who is an influential database professional is on the list. With 100 slots, there were decisions and choices, and there are some experts and incredibly valuable community people who didn’t make the list.

Thanks to all of the people who blog, speak, volunteer, and otherwise help drive the database professional industry forward.

It’s an honor, and I hope Redgate continues to do this in the future.

September 9, 2022
Database Search in SQL Monitor

I learned something new recently. I can search in SQL Monitor for a database name, not just a server or instance name.

I tested this over at monitor.red-gate.com recently after a developer mentioned this feature. If you look at the Global Dashboard, there are a lot of machines. You can see 28 instances monitored, but many more databases.

If I were looking for the DatabaseWeekly database, I would need to know which instance this was hosted on. I do know, but someone in our IT support org might not.

However, if they start typing in the search box at the, the instances shrink. This is the top left box that has “Filter by name” in light text. If I type “database”, you can see fewer instances.

If I add the weekly, then you see there is a cluster of two machines that have this database.

If I pick one of these machines, I can see the databases with this name listed.

A handy little feature I knew nothing about.

Give this a try if you have SQL Monitor and save even more time digging into performance issues. If you don’t have SQL Monitor, download an eval today and give it a try.

July 18, 2022