A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Deborah Melkin explains deployment:
One of the big challenges I had was how to move the app from different environments. Following best software development practices, we have a development environment in our Power Platform that uses a development database as well as a production environment that points to a different production database. This has been a multi-step process with hurdles along the way.
Read on for Deborah’s thoughts and some of the issues she hit along the way.
Leave a CommentIn this video, I explain what continuous integration (CI) is, disambiguate continuous delivery from continuous deployment (CD), and see how you can perform CI/CD operations using GitHub Actions.
Read on to see what these terms mean and an example of how it all works with .NET projects.
Leave a CommentIn this video, we look at how to perform Infrastructure as Code in GitHub. We take a Bicep script and generate new Azure resources using it and GitHub Actions.
The video includes a very brief primer on Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and Bicep, and then gets into how you can use GitHub Actions to keep your Azure resources configured the way you expect.
Leave a CommentMadhumita Tripathy takes a step back:
DBCC CLONEDATABASE command generates a schema-only copy of a database. Effective March 1, 2025, Microsoft will discontinue support for the use of the DBCC CLONEDATABASE command as a tool to copy database to production environment. The command is intended for diagnostic and troubleshooting purposes only. Any use of the command for purposes other than those specified will not be supported by Microsoft from the aforementioned date. All editions of Microsoft SQL Server 2016 and later versions are affected by this change.
Now I’m a bit curious about the why behind this post.
Comments closedIn this video, we dig into GitHub’s process for executing code: GitHub Actions workflows. We’ll learn what Actions and workflows are, how we can create them from scratch, and how to incorporate Actions from the GitHub Marketplace into our own workflows.
Along the way, I describe what GitHub Actions workflows are and we build a simple one. I’ll have more videos coming up that expand on GitHub Actions and show you more of what you can do with them.
Comments closedBen Johnston builds out feature flags:
My motivation for writing this summary was an interaction with a project owner that didn’t understand why we couldn’t use feature flags directly in Power BI to control the user interface. This was different from our other deployments, so it took a few rounds of explanations to convince them that our use case didn’t support feature flags. It’s an oversimplification to say they can’t be used in data projects. They can be used in Power BI and other reporting tools, but the implementation is different from coding languages and their usage is limited in comparison. Feature flags can also be used in ETL tools, data engines, ETL tools, and other data tools, but with some caveats. Sometimes those caveats are severe enough that you will want to carefully consider how you use feature flags in your data projects.
Read the whole thing. The way Ben lays things out reminds me of why I historically haven’t been the biggest fan of feature flags, though they can be quite useful for application development purposes.
Comments closedSoheil Bakhshi has some thoughts:
In a previous post, I shared a comprehensive guide on implementing Incremental Data Refresh in Power BI Desktop. We covered essential concepts such as truncation and load versus incremental load, understanding historical and incremental ranges, and the significant benefits of adopting incremental refresh for large tables. If you missed that post, I highly recommend giving it a read to get a solid foundation on the topic.
Now, let’s dive into Part 2 of this series where we will explore tips and tricks for implementing Incremental Data Refresh in more complex scenarios. This blog follows up on the insights provided in the first part, offering a deeper understanding of how Incremental Data Refresh works in Power BI. Whether you’re a seasoned Power BI user or just getting started, this post will provide valuable information on optimising your data refresh strategies. So, let’s begin.
Read on for plenty of detail, including your available options and how to use them.
Comments closedJosephine Bush automates a deployment:
A well-structured Terraform module for Azure SQL DB typically consists of the following elements:
- Main Configuration Files:
main.tf,variables.tf,outputs.tf- Helper Files: (if necessary)
locals.tf,providers.tf, etc.If you want to learn more about the basics of Terraform, you can visit my previous blog post.
Click through to see how Josephine has put together the Azure SQL Database deployment module.
Comments closedKevin Chant checks in a Power BI project:
I decided to test the guide with the Power BI report that I showed in my post about work with Microsoft Fabric Git integration and multiple workspaces.
So, I went through the guide and was pleasantly surprised that it showed how to do it with a YAML pipeline in Azure Pipelines. Which I must admit I prefer for reasons that I covered why in a previous post about disabling classic pipelines in Azure DevOps.
Read on for a review of the issues Kevin had to sort out, as well as two mechanisms to improve the performance of your Azure DevOps CI process.
Comments closedAmit Khandelwal packs a lot into a post:
It’s time for a new blog on how Ansible can simplify SQL Server deployment, configuration, and availability. If you’ve read my previous blogs on Ansible for SQL Server installation and configuration, and the pacemaker-based Always On availability group, you know how powerful Ansible can be. Now, let’s talk about HPE Serviceguard for Linux (SGLX), a high availability/disaster recovery solution that provides business continuity for critical applications like SQL Server.
Deploying SQL Server Always On availability groups on HPE SGLX is a fully supported solution for production workloads.
Today, let’s look at how you can configure Always On availability group based on HPE SGLX via Ansible. We have collaborated with our friends in HPE to enable the Ansible based deployment for HPE SGLX with SQL Server. This feature is now available for HPE SGLX 15.10. For this demonstration, you can download the evaluation bits from the ‘My HPE Software Center‘. The Ansible bits with the scripts are available on GitHub:
Read on for instructions and what you need to make it all work.
Comments closed