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What I'm Up To

Upcoming Events
  • How DevOps Keeps DBAs Safe from Being Automated Out of a Job – Free online Webinar – March 23, 9 AM Pacific / noon Eastern – Register
  • Designing Schema Changes with a DevOps Mindset – Free in-person talk – April 10, 6:45 PM, OregonSQL user group (Portland)
  • 3 Tips for Getting Executive Buy-In for DevOps – Data Grillen in Lingen, Germany – June 21st, 2019 – Schedule
New Recordings
  • DevOps: What, who, why and how? – 1 hour – Watch
  • Get Inspired: Celebrate the Careers of Three DevOps Heroes – 1 hour – Watch
  • What ‘Digital Transformation’ means, and how you can use it to advance your career– 1 hour – Watch
  • Can This Team Succeed at DevOps? Panel discussion – 1 hour – Watch
  • SQL In the City Streamed – Watch the whole stream
    • Crucial data privacy and protection insights for 2010 – with Richard Macaskill – 45 minutes – Watch
    • The four keys to unlocking DevOps – 30 minutes – Watch
  • The Best of 2018 and Predictions for 2019 (Panel with Steve, Grant, and Kathi) – 1 hour – Watch
  • What We’ve Learned about Adopting Database DevOps, and What to Avoid (MVP Panel with Guest Panelist Tony Maddonna) – 1 hour – Watch

New Free Videos on SQL Prompt, SQL Compare, and SQL Doc with Redgate’s SQL Change Automation

Kendra Little
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I’m excited to have just clicked ‘publish’ on four new videos in the brand new Evangelist Tutorials playlist on Redgate’s YouTube channel. These videos step through setting up and working with a project in one of my favorite Redgate tools: SQL Change Automation. The awesome thing about SQL Change Automation is that it gives you two things: Fine-grained control to tune and order the execution of changes to your database with a migrations-first approach to source controlling your codeA view of the state of your database, which is crucial for code reviews, controlling environment drift, and communicating about changes between developers and database administrators The tricky thing is that there’s a lot to learn when starting out with SQL Change Automation if you haven’t used a migrations-first approach in the past, or aren’t used to working in Visual Studio. That’s where these videos come in: you can follow along with…
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Bust of Developocritus, the Forgotten Greek Philosopher

State vs Migration for Database Source Control – decide based on one question

Kendra Little
2 Comments
Bust of Developocritus, the Forgotten Greek Philosopher One controversial topic in database development is how to properly store and deploy database changes. This is generally described as choosing between two options, which are approximately as easy to understand as Greek philosophy: State based – A Platonic view of the database as a snapshot of a set of forms in a given state at a point in timeMigrations – An Aristotelian view of the database defined as a series of scripts which generate change over time Yeah, I never really liked arguing about philosophers, either. Scratch all that. There’s a simple question that you can use to decide whether a state-based or migrations-based approach is right for a given database. Here’s that question: Do you want at least 95% of your database changes to deploy using auto-generated code? There you go, that’s it. Look back on your life-long experience with Clippy,…
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3 Key Points from My Upcoming Talk, “DevOps: What, Who, Why, and How?”

Kendra Little
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Next week, I’m giving a free webcast for Redgate on DevOps fundamentals. DevOps is something I am a big proponent of for database administrators, developers, and company leaders. The webcast will be held on Wednesday, Jan 23 at 8 am Pacific / 11 am Eastern. Click here to register and get a reminder to attend the live webcast, or to watch the recording after it airs. I’ll share a lot of information in the talk. As a preview, here are three points which are often the source of misunderstandings: Developer productivity is a top concern of C-level executives Implementing DevOps isn’t something you do in an afternoon. Often, DevOps implementations begin from the C-suite as part of a digital transformation effort. DevOps can also be originated from small teams in the company who transform their own practices, share their success with the company, and enlist executive support to spread these…
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Watch all my free PASS Summit recordings– and more videos at Pass.org

Kendra Little
1 Comment
A magical thing happened this week in the SQL Community Slack (it’s free to join, by the way, sign up here). In the midst of a discussion about the cost of attending conferences, Benni De Jagere shared the following tweet from Cathrine Wilhelmsen: Did you know that ALL the session recordings from PASS Summit 2017 (and earlier) are available for free? 🙂 Get your learning on here: https://t.co/zDJ9DAyr1U #SQLPass #PASSsummit #SQLFamily— Cathrine Wilhelmsen (@cathrinew) January 14, 2019 I follow Cathrine, but apparently I need to follow her more closely, as I’d missed this tweet on the 14th. I had no idea these recordings were free and searchable. These free sessions include way more than the Summits I checked out which recordings are available, and my mind was blown — it’s not just past PASS Summit recordings (excluding the 2018 Summit, most of which are not currently free), but also user…
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Watch: Can This Team Succeed at DevOps? Panel discussion

Kendra Little
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I recently participated in a panel discussion for the SQL PASS DevOps virtual chapter. If you didn’t make the meeting, you can catch our 90 minute discussion here about how to make three different teams successful at database DevOps: Abstract: DevOps sounds great in theory, but in reality it’s tricky to transform your people, process, and tools. In this interactive, poll-packed panel discussion, we will use real-world scenarios to clarify what DevOps principles are and how they help reduce manual work and improve productivity for software developers and database administrators. We’ll step through situations that are tricky when it comes to making database changes, sharing patterns to avoid and how to approach and conquer problematic entrenched processes. This session is designed to be accessible to both beginners and advanced practitioners: we’ll talk through definitions of DevOps terms and patterns and will encourage audience discussion. Your panelists: Kendra Little – Product Evangelist, RedgateHamish Watson…
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What ‘Digital Transformation’ Means, and How You Can Use It to Advance Your Career (video)

Kendra Little
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I recently spoke at the GroupBy free online conference. It was loads of fun, and the recordings from the event are now available. Here’s the hour long session I presented. Check out more free GroupBy sessions here. Session abstract: Whether you love or hate buzzwords, the big ones signify critical cultural changes. In this session, Kendra Little will explain what executives mean when they describe a ‘digital transformation’, why this transformation is happening across all industries, and how understanding this gives developers and database administrators an advantage in building their careers. You will learn what motivates CEOs to modify their business models in a digital transformation, and patterns and anti-patterns of companies that have attempted these transformations – with different results. You’ll leave the session with an understanding of the core ideas and philosophies behind digital transformation that will help you prioritize what to learn, guide your interactions at work,…
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