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Category: Deployment

Publish to Power BI Environments via ADO

Published 2023-05-10 by Kevin Feasel

Richard Swinbank deploys a report:

In the first post in this series, I built an Azure DevOps pipeline to automate steps in a Power BI development workflow. The pipeline implemented a very basic workflow – as soon as a developer committed a new report version to Git, the pipeline deployed it immediately into a Power BI workspace.

In this post I’ll be building a pipeline to support a more sophisticated workflow that enables peer review and stakeholder testing.

Click through for the step-by-step process.

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Deploying Azure SQL Edge

Published 2023-05-04 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant takes us to the edge:

Azure SQL Edge is a version of the SQL database engine that is designed to be deployed on IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

It is based on SQL Server 2019. Which means that by default all new databases are created using the SQL Server 2019 compatibility level. You can lower the compatibility level all the way down to SQL Server 2008 if required.

There was some nice functionality in Azure SQL Edge, some of which (like DATE_BUCKET() and DATETRUNC() made it into SQL Server 2022).

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Installing SqlPackage for a Deployment Pipeline

Published 2023-05-01 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant uses a deployment tool to install a deployment tool for his deployment tools:

I decided to do this post after some feedback I received about SqlPackage after a series of posts about deploying dacpacs to serverless SQL Pools. For example, my post about deploying a dacpac to a serverless SQL pool.

Because in order to deploy dacpacs to serverless SQL Pools you must update SqlPackage.

With this in mind, I thought I better go through various ways to update SqlPackage if intending to use it to deploy dacpacs to serverless SQL Pools.

Read on to see how you can do this.

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Building an Azure DevOps YAML Pipeline

Published 2023-04-18 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier Van Steenlandt busts out the YAML:

In previous blog posts, I explained how to automate the Database Project Build & Deployment process using Azure DevOps (Release) Pipelines. These blog posts focused on setting up as easily as possible using the Classic Editor.

In this blog post, I’m going through the steps of setting up a build pipeline using YAML.

Read on to learn why the YAML-based approach is the best option for ADO and how to build a pipeline.

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Using Flyway for MySQL Database Deployments

Published 2023-04-05 by Kevin Feasel

Ting Chou builds a proof of concept:

Few days ago, I asked myself a question about how can you better manage all the database changes defined in SQL scripts with DDL (Data Definition Language)? Maybe try to use version control on the SQL code and then use DevOps pipelines to achieve continuous deployment. Then, I came up with a poc solution, choux130/DevOps_In_DE/jenkins_mysql_flyway.

Click through for the repo, as well as a few TODOs.

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Improving the Robustness of ML Model Deployment

Published 2023-04-04 by Kevin Feasel

Alexander Billington shares a few tools and tips:

Machine learning (ML) model deployment is a critical part of the MLOps lifecycle, and it can be a challenging process. In the previous blog, we explored how Azure Functions can simplify the deployment process. However, there are many other factors to consider when deploying ML models to production environments. In this blog, we’ll delve deeper into some of the essential hints and tips for more robust model deployments. We’ll look at topics such as proper model versioning and packaging, data validation, and performative code optimisations. By implementing these practices, data scientists and ML engineers can ensure their models are deployed efficiently, accurately, and with minimal downtime.

MLflow is definitely a good recommendation, as is Pydantic (which is on my to-learn list…one of these days).

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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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