Voice of the DBA

Tag: Redgate

Monday Monitor Tips: SQL Auditing Preview

One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way to track security changes in your SQL Server instances. The first slice of this work is in preview (as of 12 Jan 2026) and this post looks at what’s available.

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

Tracking Security Changes

The first iteration of tracking security changes queried instances and databases for information, stored it, and then compared it with other queries to determine what had changed. This was done hourly, and worked well, but it could not determine exactly when a change was made.

SQL Audit is made to capture this information in a lightweight way This works well, although the tooling (IMHO) is poor and hard to work with. Redgate Monitor is going to overlay this and make it easy for DBAs, InfoSec, and auditors to better understand what is happening in a SQL Server Environment.

There is a new tab in Redgate Monitor Enterprise Permissions page that contains this data. This is listed as “SQL Audit” and you can see this below.

Each row in here gives the time of the change, as detected by SQL Audit. If I expand the first column, I can see the details. In this case, we have a regular workload running to change these so that the demo site has data, hence you are likely to see the same data every day on monitor.red-gate.com.

The last column in the right has the command captured, with PII redacted, as you can see here. The reason you may see only the CREATE LOGIN items and not DROP LOGIN is this first slice of work is just getting the additions, so you can catch those hackers trying to add accounts.

The SQL Audit documentation page explains how this works, and keep checking this as there is a team enhancing these features on a regular basis and adding more events.

As with most of the pages in Redgate Monitor, you can filter and customize what data is displayed. You can also export your data as an csv file you can give to others. You have the option to get all data or just filtered data.

Summary

This post shows how a new preview feature in Redgate Monitor Enterprise uses SQL Audit to gather data on specific actions that are being taken on your SQL Server instances. This is a useful feature many customers have requested and it is being actively enhanced, so feedback is appreciated.

If you have feedback, please let us know as we value your opinions and comments on how we shape the future of Redgate 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.

February 2, 2026
Deploying an Updated Model with SQL Compare 16

In a previous post, I deployed a model to a database using SQL Compare 16. This used a new feature in that connects to Redgate Data Modeler. In this post, I want to update my model, and again use SQL Compare to just get the changes deployed.

There’s a video of this post at the bottom if you’d rather watch me work.

This is part of a series on Redgate Data Modeler. This is also part of a series of posts on SQL Compare.

Updating the Model

As with the last article, everything was in sync with SQL Compare. You can see this below.

Let’s alter a few things. First, I’ll add a new table. I wrote about this in another post, but I’ll click new table, click in the diagram and then fill in details. In this case, I’m creating the Organization table.

I’ll also alter an existing table. I’ll click the “Add column” in the lower right of the properties blade after selecting the table in the diagram.

I fill in some details here.

I’ve made my changes, so let’s now return to SQL Compare and click “Refresh” at the top. This re-runs the comparison and as you can see, I have some changes. My new table is listed at the top, and I’ve clicked on the altered table, UserAuthProvider. At the bottom, I can see the change in the diff view.

I’ll click “Deploy” just as I did previously and run the deployment. Once it complete, I can see the changes in my database.

Summary

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in many years of work, it’s that I’ll make mistakes in my design and I need to change things. Hopefully I catch these mistakes in development, but even when I do, I need to update my dev database.

This post showed how I can adjust my model, or someone else can, and I can then pull the new changes into my database with SQL Compare 16.

SQL Compare is an amazing tool that millions of users have enjoyed for 25 years. If you’ve never tried it, give it an eval today and see what you think. 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 this post.

January 28, 2026
Looking Back at the Redgate 2026 Company Kickoff

Last week I spent a few days in Cambridge, UK for the Redgate Company Kickoff. I landed at 1130a Monday and flew away at 1215p Thursday. I wish I could say it was my shortest trip to the UK, but I think it’s the 4th or 5th shortest.

Almost the entire company converged in the UK for the event. We haven’t done this in the past, with separate kickoffs in different regions in the past. This time I saw friends and colleagues from Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, UK, the US, and likely somewhere else.

In fact we split this into two days. Day 1 (shown above) was Sales and Marketing with Day 2 being the Engineering, Product, and other groups. I was only there for Day 1. Day 2 was at the Redgate office with some meetings and our marketing group getting together. Plus a few breaks.

Monday was a whirlwind, though we managed to get two Simple Talks podcasts recorded. Look for them coming soon. Tuesday was a very early start for someone that had been up Sat/Sun in Denver at 530a, and now needed a 600am GMT wakeup. It was very dark as we headed to Bletchley Park. I think I look way more tired than Pat.

The kickoff was great. It felt more organized, and we are looking to focus more on things that help our customers find success as well as finding the customers that we can help rather than every customer out there. I like that we constantly talk about helping our customers as we look to grow the company.

I walked around, talking tech, business, life, and Redgate with colleagues a bit at our break and saw a bit of the museum, but honestly I couldn’t focus. I was too caught up in what we didn’t do well last year and where we’re going. I managed a couple shots in the museum (Bombe below), but gave up quickly and went to find other Redgaters to talk to.

I wasn’t sure if it was worth taking everyone to Bletchley, but as we talked about our plans and then things customers want, the theme made more sense. We certainly know security is important, and maybe becoming more important, to many customers. Interesting tie ins as a few of our upper management people had relatives or family friends who had worked there during WWII.

I was up to late on Tue and Wednesday. Tue with my warrior daughter who was spending two weeks touring universities in Europe. It was great to have her come through Cambridge and us catch up for a few hours.

Wednesday was talks from Marketing in our office. The whole group was there and I led an AMA with the Advocates on various topics. It was interesting and always informative as I only lightly know how marketing works.

Dinner was with our team and then a late night chatting over beers with various others. I finally made it up to my room only to get a message from my wife. I called her and she asked me why I was up so late. It was 2am!

A short chat and then a very short night as I have a 7am car to the airport. Fortunately I managed to sleep on the plane.

I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to bring the whole company together (its’s $$$), but afterwards I think it was. I’m glad we did and I’m looking forward to 2026.

January 26, 2026
Flyway Tips: AI Helps with Commit Messages

At Redgate, we’re experimenting with how AI can help developers and DBAs become better at their jobs. Everyone is asking for AI, as well as the ability to turn AI off. We’re working hard to accommodate both requests as we look for ways to leverage AI.

One of the areas we’ve started to add some AI is in Flyway Desktop (FWD), with a few features designed to help reduce the cognitive load and save time as they work with databases.

I wrote about summaries of migrations scripts and migration script naming recently. This post looks at another of those changes, which is the generation of a commit message..

I’ve been working with Flyway and Flyway Desktop for work more and more as we transition from older SSMS plugins to the standalone tool. This series looks at some tips I’ve gotten along the way.

Summarizing My Changes

Commit messages are hard. There are numerous posts on the art of writing one, as well as no shortage of examples showing poorly structured messages. As I look through my own messages in the SQL Saturday repo, I’m somewhat surprised at times at ow well I’ve described something, or how poorly. I’ve certainly had the “fix” messages creep into my work.

When we start making database changes, we often have a number of things we might touch. A new column could necessitate view and stored proc changes. One view might impact another, or a function. A piece of work might include alterations of a few tables, and fixes that might not be obvious need a bit of a description in the commit message.

If nothing else, we need to ensure we’re linking commits to planned work on Azure DevOps boards, in Jira, or wherever a project manager might be assigning tasks.

Flyway has added an AI feature to help us summarize our changes. It’s in preview as of Jan 12, 2026, and is designed to help ensure we get a better commit message than “fixed.”

Generating Commit Messages

When I go to the VCS tab in Flyway Desktop (FWD), I see all my changes listed. In this case, I’ve been demoing and testing a lot of things that I haven’t committed. Bad practice, and I’m a little upset with myself for not keeping my repo clean.

Notice the little sparkle below the Commit button? This is where the AI help lives. If I select a few files, in a few seconds I’ll get a message generated for me. This is a decent summary, at just over 50 characters.

If I don’t like this and want to edit it I can. If I do that, the AI won’t overwrite this. I’ll change the wording and select another file. Notice that the message remains the same.

If I want a new message, I can click the AI sparkle and it will regenerate this. I’ll show this in the video below.

If I select all the files, the AI summary isn’t great, but then again, I don’t know how I’d summarize all these changes. I might not do any better.

This is a small thing, but I often find that I struggle to come up with a meaningful message at times. Sometimes I do a good job and add something relevant with a work item number. Sometimes I want to just type “new table” or “fixed bug”.

This reduces some of the creativity burden when I’m working through database changes.

Enabling AI Features in Flyway

This is a preview feature as of Jan 5, 2026 as I write this. To get this in your FWD, your organization needs to have enabled AI features in your portal. I’m just a member, but whoever is an admin for your Redgate products would find it here.

In FWD, you need to look at the Preview Features item under the config menu.

In this area, you can enable or disable features as needed. I see these marked as Red-gate only, but I think they are supposed to be released to some customers by this time. It’s likely I need to upgrade my FWD, which I’ll do when I have time.

Once you do this, you should start seeing some AI stuff with the purple/pink shaded area and the sparkle icon that we’re all seeing everywhere.

Summary

Getting meaningful commit messages can be hard, but it’s also a tedious thing. I find that developers often get lazy and do the minimum. That AI might not be much better, but it does reduce the need for a user to think of a message and gives them a starting point from which to work.

To me, this is one of the better uses of AI, handling a common, but tedious task. Now to go clean up my repo and take advantage of this with a bunch of smaller commits.

This feature is documented, but we are likely to enhance and change it a bit, so all feedback is welcome. If your organization doesn’t want you using AI, and you could share some schema from a migration script, I’d be happy to test it for you and see what summary is produced and send it back to you. Ping me on X/LinkedIn/BlueSky if you want.

Flyway is an incredible way of deploying changes from one database to another, and now includes both migration-based and state-based deployments. You get the flexibility you need to control database changes in your environment. If you’ve never used it, give it a try today. It works for SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL and nearly 50 other platforms.

Video Walkthrough

See a video of me looking at this feature below.

January 23, 2026