Voice of the DBA

Tag: speaking

  • Encryption in Las Vegas – SQL Saturday #295

    I enjoy Las Vegas, usually trying to see a show of some sort when I’m there. I’ll have the chance next week, when I’m in town for SQL Saturday #295 on Apr 5. It will be a fairly quick trip for me, but I’ll see if I can find something fun to do. Perhaps Penn and Teller.

    The first SQL Saturday in Nevada (knocking another state off the master list) will be taking place and while it’s a small event, it has a packed schedule of SQL Server experts. I’ll be talking encryption and you’ll have the chance to learn Hadoop, dimensional modeling, database design, monitoring and more. It’s an amazing lineup with many out of state speakers traveling to help the SQL Server community in Las Vegas learn more. Pat Wright, Russ Thomas, Allen White, Joey D’Antoni, Jason Horner, Tom LaRock, Reeves Smith, Tamera Clark, Mike Fal, TJay Belt, David Klee and more are on the schedule.

    This will be a fun event, and I’m looking forward to this trip, even if it will be a little quick for me. I hope you’ll join us if you’re anywhere in the Las Vegas area, and please stop me to say hi if you see me.

  • Speaking About Unstructured Data at SQL Saturday #287 – Madison

    I haven’t been to Wisconsin in a long time. Not since I was a little kid, going to visit family. However I’m heading up there next week for SQL Saturday #287 in Madison, WI. I’ll be speaking about unstructured data, basically Filestream and Filetable, giving a preview of the talk I’ll be doing at SQL Intersection in a few weeks.

    If unstructured data isn’t your thing, the schedule has a number of well known speakers coming for the event. Brent Ozar, Jes Borland, Bill Fellows, Joe Sack, Michelle Ufford, and many more covering all sorts of topics from SSIS to AlwaysOn to Powershell. You’ll have a chance to make some hard decisions during each time slow, trying to determine which sessions you’re willing to miss to see some other great presentations.

    There are also some great pre-cons available on Friday from David Klee (virtualization), Jes Borland and Ted Krueger (Tuning), and Dan English (BI). These are some of the most affordable all day training you’ll ever find, so take advantage if you can.

    If you’re anywhere in the area, which might mean almost anywhere from Minneapolis to Des Moines to Chicago, consider making the trek for a fun, informative day with the #sqlfamily. I hope to see you there.

  • What is Continuous Integration for Databases?

    I have a talk that I give on Automated Build and Test for databases. This was put together by one of the engineers at Red Gate Software, and I’ve presented it at a number of events. I enjoy it, and it’s one of those presentations that really gets people thinking. I enjoy getting people to think about software, and there are always good questions that come out of the session.

    The talk is essentially about how to set up continuous integration for databases. Continuous Integration is an extension of the daily build, which companies have been using for years to try and ensure some discipline in their software development practices. They want to limit the amount of code that can potentially break software.  The whole idea is to test changes developers commit to version control as quickly as possible and give feedback developers immediately so developers can fix issues while the issue is fresh in their minds.

    For databases, this can be a challenge. We have this stuff called data that has to be maintained between, during, and after builds. We can’t drop our structures and reload them as a developer does with an executable or DLL. As we work in a CI environment, we need to handle new objects, as well as alterations to existing structures. That means our scripts and code need to handle creation as well as upgrade scripts.

    This means that a CI process for databases must not only check out the DDL code from a Version Control System (VCS), but it must also handle the CREATE or ALTER code based on the state of the database. You can always build a database from scratch in your CI process, or you can restore a known version (usually the last version) and apply upgrade scripts. The way this happens depends on how you version your DDL code in a VCS and how your build process is structured.

    At Red Gate, we’ve built a number of scripts to help with this process for various CI servers. We have articles that discuss CI for Team City, Jenkins, Bamboo, and probably more by the time this piece appears. We’ve learned a lot about CI over the last few years and we are trying to share both our knowledge and code with you, as well as incorporate those ideas into our products.

    Whether you use our products or not, we do believe that you will build better software if you implement CI. We just know that we can make the process a lot smoother with our tools for developers and DBAs.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

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  • SQL Deep Dives at Intersection in April

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    SQL Intersection is coming to Orlando in April, along with the rest of the Dev Intersection events the week of the 13-16th. I’ll be there speaking, along with an amazing lineup of other SQL Server experts. The SQLskills crew is headline and organizing the event and I’m looking forward to going.

    This is a smaller conference, and it’s located at an amazing facility in Orlando. It will be warm, relaxing, and a great environment to learn a ton about SQL Server.

    If you’re looking to jumpstart your SQL Server skills and get excited about the platform, consider joining me in Florida this April.