Kendra Little: database development and operations
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Upcoming Events

Free Webinar: Implementing Data Masking for NIST Compliance – Aug 27, 8 AM Pacific

Free Webinar: Fast and Reliable Development with Redgate Solutions for SQL Server – Aug 29, 10 AM Pacific

IDC DevOps Conference – Sept 26, London, UK

SQL PASS Summit – Nov 4-8, Seattle, WA

Recent Recordings

Redgate Evangelist YouTube Channel: Tutorials on Database DevOps -New videos each week – Watch

How Developers and DBAs Collaborate in a DevOps World – 40 minutes – Watch

How DevOps Keeps DBAs Safe from Being Automated Out of a Job – 1 hour – Watch

DevOps: What, who, why and how? – 1 hour – Watch

Can This Team Succeed at DevOps? Panel discussion – 1 hour – Watch

Key Findings for Database Professionals from the Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2019

Kendra Little
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The Accelerate: State of DevOps Report 2019 has just been published. This report is the latest in six years of research. With more than 31,000 survey responses, Accelerate is the longest running study of DevOps in academia or industry. In the 2019 edition, research continues to show that DevOps drives business value: high performers at DevOps are “twice as likely to meet or exceed their organizational goals.” While this isn’t a new finding, it’s very important that this continues to be true: why invest in improving at DevOps if it doesn’t drive business value? While there are a ton of valuable insights in the report, in this post I will focus in on the findings which I believe are most relevant to those of us who work “close to a database.” There are three very interesting aspects of the research which hit close to home: Speed and stability are not…
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Azure DevOps: How to Set a Custom Release Branch Folder Filter in Build Pipeline Triggers (video)

Kendra Little
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This is the first in a series of posts about simple things that I had a hard time figuring out in Azure DevOps services. It can be very useful to enable Continuous Integration for multiple folders in your DevOps pipeline — say, for every branch created under releases/ or features/. But configuring this can be strangely confusing! In this video, I show how to get a custom release branch folder set in your triggers for both build and release pipelines. Then I show a quick test of the automation at work in my demo pipeline. Spoiler: the fix is to type directly into the filter box and hit enter. It looks like that box is only for filtering existing branches, but you can use it for edits! The fix starts in the video at 1:50 if you only want to see that bit.
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SQL Server Management Studio is as Relevant as Ever

Kendra Little
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Sometimes you keep a classic around After almost fifteen years of heavy usage by developers and database administrators (DBAs), it might seem like Microsoft’s free tool, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), is about to go out of style. After all, SSMS is no longer the cool new kid on the block: Microsoft has shown consistent effort to develop their new tool, Azure Data Studio (the artist formerly known as SQL Operations Studio), since November 2017. Azure Data Studio is built on the modern foundation of Microsoft’s VS Code, whereas SQL Server Managed Studio is related to the legacy Visual Studio Shell. Based on this overview, it might seem like a new SQL Server DBA or developer should primarily learn Azure Data Studio, not SSMS. And it might similarly seem like vendors should focus on developing new tooling only for Azure Data Studio. But when you look into the details of…
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How to Persuade Your Company to Change

Kendra Little
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Like a lot of developers and database administrators, I do a fair amount of short-term problem solving during the course of my normal work week. I get to join some Redgate sales calls, often during Proof-of-Concept exercises, and this frequently involves helping brainstorm about the best way to use our tools to solve a specific need for monitoring, database development, or automation. I also pick up customer questions from the #Redgate channel in the SQL Server Community Slack and answer forum questions for Redgate when I can. Inevitably, when you do a regular amount of troubleshooting and brainstorming with customers, you start to notice patterns and have ideas about how to make things easier, faster, or better in some ways. Sometimes this is an idea for a new process or a new product, or it might be a big change to existing processes or products. The challenge is getting it…
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Managing Cross-Database Dependencies in Builds (Redgate video)

Kendra Little
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Building your database code is an essential practice to ensure that it compiles from source and that dependencies are met. But things can get tricky when you have objects in some databases which is dependent upon objects in other databases — or even circular dependencies. In this 20 minute video, I give an overview of the two most popular options that Redgate customers use to manage cross-database dependencies when building SQL Server databases with Redgate’s SQL Change Automation.
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How Developers and DBAs Collaborate in a DevOps World (video)

Kendra Little
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You’re a DBA, and your development team is all-in on doing DevOps, and they want to include the database. Should your DBA team limit the permissions or options for automation? Or should you instead re-think how your two teams work together? In this 40 minute episode, Kendra discusses DevOps team topologies, the changing role of DBA teams in DevOps, and the opportunities available in creating communities of practice around database development. Prefer to listen on the go? You can get this episode on iTunes, download the audio file, or find Dear SQL DBA in your favorite podcast app. Bookmarks of topics covered 00:30 – Our question, from a DBA 7:00 – Why bother with DevOps? 9:23 – Team topologies, aka rethinking how the teams work together. This discussion includes notes on where and when DBAs review changes and talk about architecture in a DevOps way of working. 21:20 – Changing…
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