Voice of the DBA

Tag: training

  • The Free-Con Returns to Seattle

    On Monday, October 24, 2016, there will be a Free-Con in Seattle for those that might not be attending a pre-con before the Pass Summit. Put on by Jason Brimhall and Wayne Sheffield, there’s a set of 6 sessions you can attend for free that day.

    Register now to come.

    They are asking for a $25 lunch fee to cover lunch, but you can opt out. However, please don’t register if you can’t come. I’m sure plenty of people want to go and extra registrations can upset planning.

    If you can come, the lineup is impressive:

    • Jason Brimhall
    • Wayne Sheffield
    • Grant Fritchey
    • Tjay Belt
    • Chad Crawford
    • Gail Shaw

    This is an alternative to other pre-conference sessions that PASS puts on, and you have to chance to learn about PowerBI, Temporal Tables, Wait Stats, Impact Analysis, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

    If you aren’t attending another event on Monday, perhaps you’d like to come to the Free-con and enjoy learning and discussing SQL Server with a few highly talented SQL Server pros.

  • Maturing Your Database Development Process–Version Control

    At Redgate Software, we have a progression of the stages of a database development pipeline. These are the various ways in which you can better engineer your database development to ensure smoother releases to production, with less issues. There are five stages:

    • Manual (S0)
    • Source Control (S1)
    • Continuous Integration (S2)
    • Release Management (S3)
    • Monitoring (S4)

    As I travel around, speaking on these topics, I find many people working in development stops that are really at the S0 level.

    For databases, that is. For their .NET or Java or PHP software, quite a few are at S2, and maybe working towards S3 in many projects.

    That’s a disconnect, and it’s one that we’d like to see changed at Redgate. Certainly we can help and we’d like you to use our products, but more, we want to see better development all around.

    We’re Trying to Help New York City

    In a few weeks, on August 27, 2015, I’ll be in New York to help teach our Database Source Control workshop. Ike Ellis (Crafting Bytes) is teaching the class, and I’ll be there to support him and run the labs. This is a course that Grant Fritchey, myself, and a few others at Redgate Software have built.

    This is the chance to learn how your organization can implement version control for your database, just as most of your developers probably already have for the other software you write.

    We’ll cover setting up Source Control, deploying changes from versions, branching, merging, and more. This is a great hands-on introduction to stabilizing your database development. We’ll provide a VM with labs that you will actually complete.

    We’ve put this first step to building a DLM pipeline on sale for $100. If you’re close to NYC, consider taking a day off and joining us at the Microsoft office in Manhattan for a little database education.

    If you can’t make this workshop, look through our schedule and join us somewhere at a future time.

  • Database Version Control Workshops

    We’ve got more Workshops coming this fall from Redgate Software to help you get the most out of our tools and improve your database development processes. The list of our training schedule is out, and I’ll be at a few of these.

    The schedule does changes as we can add more dates and partners, so keep checking it, or let us know if you’d like to have a class near you.

    Baton Rouge, LA – Jul 31, 2015

    I’ll be traveling to Baton Rouge, LA for our July 31 class with Ike Ellis on Database Source Control. Ike’s teaching, and I’m there to help and manage the labs that we’ve put together for the class.

    This workshop is the day before SQL Saturday #423 in Baton Rouge, so if you’re attending that, consider coming a day early and getting some hands on knowledge of database and version control on Friday. It’s only $100 (a limited time sale), so register today.

    New York City – August 20, 2015

    We’ve also scheduled to give a Database Source Control workshop in New York City, in Manhattan on August 20, 2015. Once again, Ike and I will run the workshop, giving you a chance to learn how you can better manage the code in your databases with a VCS.

    Come Learn

    I hope to see some of you at one of these workshops, or one later in the year. We’ve really worked hard to pack a lot of information into a long day, helping you actually use the tools and technologies to control your database code. We’ll talk about how a VCS integrates with your code, what to include, how to handle branching and merging, and more.

    We’ve put the price of these workshops on sale for the remainder of the year, so take advantage and register today.

  • Unit Testing in Philadelphia

    I’m helping teach a pre-conference session on Friday, June 5, 2015 at the Microsoft office in Philadelphia. This is an all day, paid for event, that looks at how you can use a framework to write unit tests for your T-SQL code. We’re the day before SQL Saturday #390 in Philadelphia

    I really believe in testing, and am trying to advocate for it in many places. I’ve delivered a testing session that has been well received at quite a few events and this is the first time I’m trying a full day training class.

    I am working with Sebastian Meine, the founder of tSQLt, to present the class. We’ve got a busy outline, looking at a variety of ways that you can write tests and use them to find problems in code. Here’s what we’re covering.

    • Introduction to Unit Testing
    • What is tSQLt?
    • Your First Test
    • Executing Tests correctly
    • Effective use of Assertions
    • Separation of Concerns
    • Testing Exceptions
    • Test Case Heuristics
    • Dealing with Test Data
    • Other Types of Testing
    • How Unit Testing fits into your Development Process

    At the end of the class, you should have some good ideas on how to build and structure tests in your own environment and be ready to start testing on Monday.

    I hope to see you there, and register today if you want to learn more about unit testing in SQL Server.