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Category: DevOps

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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Rolling Your Own Serverless SQL Pool Database Project

Published 2023-02-28 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant doesn’t let the lack of support for a product limit him:

In this post I want to share how I created a homemade serverless SQL Pool database project.

Because I know people are keen to work this way right now. Mostly due to the comments I received when I covered how to deploy a dacpac to a serverless SQL pool.

By the end of this post you will know how I created a database project for it. Plus, how you can deploy the contents of the database project with Azure DevOps. I also share plenty of links along the way.

Though Kevin did run into some challenges trying to hack in a solution, so it’s not quite as useful as you’d first hope.

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Lessons Learned from Creating Database Projects

Published 2023-02-21 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier Van Steenlandt shares some hard-earned knowledge:

Almost 5 years ago I made the switch from “traditional” database development using SQL Server Management Studio to a more flexible way of development by using Database Projects and Source Control. In the first few years, I worked with BitBucket as my code management system and for 2 years I’m using Azure DevOps. In my spare time, I’m using GitHub as well.

During this transition, I came across a couple of bumps, because I wasn’t familiar with Database Projects and I only had a notion about Source Control (Git). In this blog post, I will describe my journey and the lessons learned during the process.

Click through for several tips.

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CI/CD and Postgres

Published 2023-01-09 by Kevin Feasel

Ryan Booz thinks about Database DevOps:

At the core, the biggest problem we needed to solve was making our database change process visible to the whole team. We had to modify our processes and the expectations we had of individual people within the team to deliver better, more consistent value at the data layer.

The tools we chose for our circumstances don’t apply completely to PostgreSQL because they were SQL Server specific. But the process and benefits of building a “database as code” mindset within the team accelerated our velocity and quality. And Joe didn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Ryan includes links to additional resources and tells an interesting story along the way.

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Power BI DevOps and CI/CD

Published 2022-12-30 by Kevin Feasel

Paul Turley tackles a difficult topic:

By most estimates, far more than 80% of all Power BI projects are small and performed by one Data Analyst or Developer. We know that Power BI is also used to develop high-volume datasets, models and business reports in full-scale deployment scenarios where DevOps principles are taken very seriously. So, with a significant minority of large-scale Power BI projects fitting into a category where someone might even think about fundamental concepts like version control or team development; what, exactly does DevOps for Power BI even mean when one size doesn’t fit every project?

Read the whole thing. Paul also includes a video on the topic for those so inclined.

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GitHub CI/CD for Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022

Published 2022-11-03 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant does a bit of CI/CD:

In this post I want to show how a GitHub CI/CD experience for Azure Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022 can look. Which uses GitHub Actions. Including how to automatically stop and start it in the pipeline.

In my last post I showed a complete CI/CD experience for Azure Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022 using Azure DevOps.

With this in mind, in this post I show an alternative GitHub CI/CD experience for Azure Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022 which uses GitHub Actions. Which includes automatically stopping the link before the database update and starting it again after the update has completed.

Read on to learn how.

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Database Projects and Version Control

Published 2022-10-21 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier van Steenlandt helps you get database code into source control:

In this blog post, we will focus on how to get started with Database Projects and how to get this into Source Control (Azure Repos). So together we will create our first Database Project, import our database into the project and push it to the Azure Repository.

Before we can start, we need to make sure that we have the required tools installed, in this blog post I will focus on Visual Studio. In order to create your first Database Project, you need to ensure that the SQL Server Data Tools extension for Visual Studio is installed.

This one I intended to post earlier in the week but it got away from me for a little bit. Do check it out.

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CI/CD with Azure Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022

Published 2022-10-21 by Kevin Feasel

Kevin Chant gives us the whole story:

In this post I want to show you a complete CI/CD experience for Azure Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022 tables. Which uses a YAML Pipeline in Azure DevOps. Including how to automatically stop and start it in the pipeline.

In a previous post I showed how an easier way to perform CI/CD for Azure Synapse Link for SQL Server 2022. Where you only need to stop the link, update the SQL Server database and afterwards start the link again.

However, the best CI/CD solutions are the ones where you do not do any manual work at all. This includes stopping and starting the link.

And that’s just what Kevin gives us.

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Using the Confluent Terraform Provider

Published 2022-09-29 by Kevin Feasel

Spencer Shumway has a tutorial:

As part of our recent Q3 Launch for Confluent Cloud we announced the general availability of the Confluent Terraform Provider. HashiCorp Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code tool that lets you define both cloud and on-prem resources in human-readable configuration files that you can version, reuse, and share, using standardized resource management tooling, pipelines, and processes.

Click through for a getting started video as well as the tutorial.

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Releasing a Tabular Model without Users or Roles

Published 2022-09-22 by Kevin Feasel

Olivier van Streenlandt hit a deployment problem:

A couple of weeks ago my team & I ran into an issue with SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), due to a network split between companies, We weren’t able anymore to manage our SSAS access into our SSAS Tabular Model. Since deploying a Tabular Model using Visual Studio is also overwriting members & roles, we needed to find a valid alternative to execute our deployments. Manually at first and automated in the end.

Read on to see how they used Azure DevOps pipelines to solve the issue.

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