Continuous Delivery - Code Aperture

Increased Database Security: Another Reason to Adopt DevOps

The tooling necessary to incorporate DevOps practices is already out there. There are many different flavors of build tools, Jenkins, TeamCity, VSTS, AppVeyor, and Bamboo. Release management is covered by Octopus Deploy, Release Management, and Bamboo. And finally, database automation tooling provided by Redgate SQL Toolbelt and Microsoft SSDT. The

devops

Automated Deployments is Mission Critical

In my late twenties, I was hired to work on a project for a new client. The project was to add a lot of new features to a SaaS application. The client was the largest player in its particular industry and wanted a lot of customizations. After several months of

devops

DevOps - Smaller Builds

As stated in a previous article, one of the goals we are focusing on right now is deploying to pre-production every 45 minutes. At first blush, that seems a bit fast. When I broached it with my team they (rightfully) pointed our current CI build takes 15 minutes to build,

devops

DevOps - Start of Collaboration

In a recent meeting of the Octopus Deploy Workgroup, I proposed the question "what do we have to change in our process to be able to deploy to pre-production every 45 minutes?" The Octopus Deploy Workgroup was created a year ago when Farm Credit Services of America decided

devops

DevOps - Introduction to Streamlined Deployments

As stated in the previous article, DevOps is the answer to the question, "what do I have to change in my process to be able to and want to deploy to production 10 times a day with zero downtime?" The number 10 was not just some random number

Continuous Delivery

DevOps Introduction

For the longest time, I thought DevOps meant the developers were the ones who took over server maintenance from an operations team, be it a web admin or DBA. The only way for that to happen was to be up in the cloud. After all, the name says it all,

RedGate

Redgate Command Line Tools

One of the less common known facts about Redgate's DLM Automation suite is purchasing license grants the purchaser the right to use to command line versions of SQL Data Compare and SQL Compare. Seems strange, right? Well when you really boil it down to the basic parts, the new DLM

RedGate

Using Gitflow and Redgate DLM Automation for Continuous Delivery

One of the key reasons to use Redgate's Tooling is to deliver value faster to the business. In order to do that, it is important to have a branching policy in place. This is only possible with a local database and Redgate's tools. Prior to implementing their tools, all developers

RedGate

Getting Started with Red Gate DLM Automation Suite

Red Gate's DLM Automation Suite is the second half of the automated database deployments process. It takes the scripts that were created by SQL Source Control, builds a package, and then deploys that package to the various database environments (test, staging, production, etc.). Red Gate has built the tooling so

Automation

Database Changes - Build Once, Deploy Anywhere

A core concept of continuous delivery is build once, deploy anywhere. The idea behind it is simple, the code is built once and deployed to all the servers throughout the various environments. For example, if you had a development, testing, staging and production server, you would build once before deploying

Automated Database Deployments

Automated Database Deployments - Getting Buy-in

Automated Database Deployments is rather disruptive. But it is disruptive in a good way. Depending on the company, database deployments could be a "wild west" process where every team has their way of deploying changes. Getting any sense of consistency is going to be difficult. When I was

Continuous Delivery

Getting to Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery allows us as developers to respond quickly to feedback to ensure we are meeting the business needs. Being able to respond quickly to changes the business needs without putting underdo strain on our resources will help us deliver value to the company and by extension our customers. Definitions

Automation

Six Ways to Fail At Local Database Development

A while ago I was assigned to a project to move all of all the business logic from Oracle packages into C# code. Before I could even start moving the code I had to create a suite of tests covering those business rules in the database. The Oracle packages read

Automation

How to bring down a Production SQL Server with one line of code

Small releases shouldn't cause major outages. It certainly shouldn't take down a production database server. In the end it was one line of code. That exposed several flaws and brought down the database server. Wednesday night my team and I deployed a release to production. The release consisted of both

Database

Database and Continuous Delivery

Nobody likes getting called at 2 AM. But it happens. More often than not, the reason for that page will have something to do with the database. A SQL job failed, a stored procedure didn’t get deployed, a missing index on a table. That problem doesn’t seem to