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Category: Deployment

Power BI Dataset CI/CD with Azure DevOps

Published 2023-04-03 by Kevin Feasel

Stephanie Bruno does a bit of continuous integration:

There’s a lot of information on how to get around the lack of an out-of-the box CI/CD solution for Power BI datasets, but for me it’s often complicated and I have to read too many pages before making much progress on my own. This post is here to strip it down and provide you with the easiest way we know to enable a bonafide CI/CD process for Power BI datasets with Azure DevOps. The post is still longer than we’d like, but it includes detailed step-by-step instructions to walk you through every part of the process. To save space, we used slideshows for the screenshots, but you can pause them as you follow along.

There are a lot of steps but the goal is a worthwhile one.

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.NET Framework Versions and ADO Pipeline Builds

Published 2023-03-28 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier Van Steenlandt runs into a versioning issue:

The error message I received during the build process in my Azure DevOps YAML Pipeline was :

##[error]C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise\MSBuild\Current\Bin\Microsoft.Common.CurrentVersion.targets(1229,5): Error MSB3644: The reference assemblies for .NETFramework,Version=v4.5 were not found. To resolve this, install the Developer Pack (SDK/Targeting Pack) for this framework version or retarget your application. You can download .NET Framework Developer Packs at https://aka.ms/msbuild/developerpacks

I wasn’t sure how to solve this issue, and when I was using my on-premise Agent Pool, the Database Project was able to build successfully.

Click through for the solution

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(Possible) Shifts in Zero Downtime Mentality

Published 2023-03-27 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones notices a trend:

The last year, however, has had more people looking to implement database DevOps and speed up their development, but not a lot of questions or demands for zero downtime during these deployments. I find that interesting as the world depends more and more on computer systems, and the customer base for many organizations may demand access to the systems at any hour of the day or night.

However, it doesn’t seem that as many people are concerned about small moments of downtime.

My ego would like to tell people that it’s probably because everybody read my post about how zero downtime isn’t really a thing.

Ego aside, it is pretty interesting that Steve’s not finding as much push for minimal downtime. Steve does include a few conjectures as to why it may be so.

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Model Deployment using Azure Functions

Published 2023-03-24 by Kevin Feasel

Alexander Billington needs to get that new model out:

Deploying machine learning (ML) models into production can be challenging, as it requires careful consideration of various factors such as scalability, reliability, and maintainability. While developing an ML model is an exciting process, deploying it into production can be a daunting task. The challenges faced in productionising data science projects can range from infrastructure to version control, model monitoring to integration with other systems. This blog will take a look at how Azure Functions can simplify the deployment process, getting models into production quickly and robustly to maximise their value.

I like this approach and find it interesting, as most of the time, the MLOps model Microsoft recommends has you scheduling Azure DevOps pipelines / GitHub Actions periodically or when new training data hits a specific folder. If you have some non-standard trigger for an action, this is a good way to get you going.

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Performing an Azure DevOps Release for a Database Project

Published 2023-03-23 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier Van Steenlandt pushes out the database:

In my previous blog post, Automate your Database Builds – Using Azure DevOps Pipelines, we successfully automated our Build process. As a next step, we will be automating our deployment process to Azure SQL.

In this blog post, we will go through the process step-by-step to set up our Release pipeline in Azure DevOps and execute our first release just by clicking a button.

Olivier has plenty of screenshots to take us through the process.

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QA Refreshes via CI/CD

Published 2023-03-15 by Kevin Feasel

Hiram Fleitas rebuilds the QA environment:

In this post I am going to cover how to automatically refresh a lower environment commonly used for testing as part of your release (CD) pipeline.

Well, why? – you may be asking.

  1. In some cases, developers and testers need to test their application code-changes against a fresh copy of production-like data. This helps them do validations prior to publishing their changes to production where their apps are bombarded by end-user live workloads.
  2. Also, the lower environment may be used for testing, and we can’t overwrite the test data constantly. It needs to be a hot-standby refresh, made available when necessary.

Click through for notes on the process.

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Deploying a Database via Azure DevOps Pipeline

Published 2023-03-08 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier Van Steenlandt deploys a database:

After we successfully introduced a database development strategy in my previous blog post series, Getting Started With Database Projects & Azure DevOps, we can look at how to introduce a database deployment automation strategy using Database Projects and Azure DevOps Pipelines.

As a starter, we will first be implementing a build automation process and in future blog posts, we will go through the different ways of deployment to different environments. On top of that, we will also discuss the differences between SQL Server and AzureSQL database deployments.

Read on for the full story.

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GitHub Actions for CI/CD against SQL Server 2022

Published 2023-03-07 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant has a new template for us:

In this post I want to cover performing CI/CD for SQL Server 2022 using GitHub Actions. For a couple of reasons.

First one is due to the fact that last week I was answering a query on the well known SQLHelp hashtag about deploying updates to SQL Server using GitHub Actions. That is when it dawned on me that I had never shared a repository to solely perform CI/CD for SQL Server using GitHub Actions.

Second reason is due to the fact that I wanted to show how to create an SDK-style database project for SQL Server 2022. By Using the ‘Microsoft.Build.Sql‘ .NET SDK for database projects.

Click through for the GitHub repo and plenty of links and information.

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SqlPackage Support for the Serverless SQL Pool

Published 2023-03-06 by Kevin Feasel

Rui Cunha announces an update to SqlPackage.exe:

SqlPackage release 161.8089.0, dated February 13, 2023, brings a new feature: support for Synapse serverless SQL pools. According to the release notes, you can use SqlPackage to extract and publish both external and internal objects from serverless SQL pools. This includes the T-SQL surface area of serverless SQL pools is limited by design to external tables, external views, stored procedures, functions, statistics, and credentials. 

The following features are included in support for serverless SQL pools:

  • delta external file format
  • openrowset provider CosmosDB with PROVIDER, CONNECTION, OBJECT, and CREDENTIAL or SERVER_CREDENTIAL specified
  • openrowset format SStream
  • with () clause on openrowset

Rui also includes a quick demonstration of this new functionality.

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Disabling Classic Pipelines in Azure DevOps

Published 2023-03-02 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant shares some thoughts:

In this post I want to share my thoughts about disabling classic pipelines in Azure DevOps. Which I know there are mixed feelings about.

In addition, I want to raise awareness that this is now possible. Due to the fact that towards the end of January Microsoft announced that you can now disable creation of classic pipelines in Azure DevOps.

In other words, you can now disable the use of the GUI-based Classic Editor and the Releases features in Azure Pipelines.

I agree with Kevin here: it’s generally time to bite the bullet on infrastructure as code if you haven’t already. We talk about it in the data platform context a lot (database schemas in source control, repeatable deployment processes, maintaining config files and applying them) and it matters just as much elsewhere.

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