Database engineer with a passion for automation
I was working in my lab environment this weekend, playing with some SQL Servers that I had built with PowerShell DSC a while ago. I had installed SQL Server with mostly defaults, including not changing the engine and agent service accounts. For the blog post I thought I was going to write next, I wanted…
It’s time for February’s monthly blog party. This month is hosted by Mikey Bronowski (b|t) and he’s asking us to write about our ‘tools of the trade’. He’s looking for those tools that make our lives easier, ones we couldn’t imagine going without. Thanks for hosting Mikey, can’t wait to read everyone’s contributions and add…
I was listening to a podcast last week about PowerShell, when one of the hosts mentioned having to ‘up arrow’ back through your history to find a command you wanted to rerun. This made me realise that I should write this quick post on using PSReadLine’s interactive search function. This tip is a serious time…
When granting permissions to SQL Server resources we have a few options. One option is to grant permissions to Active Directory groups instead of individual users. This has several benefits, for example, improved security over using SQL logins, and the ability to create a separation of duties when controlling database access. However, it does add…
Have you ever wanted to quickly backup/restore a database to the same instance to do some side by side testing? Perhaps to make some index changes or code changes, without actually changing the live copy of the database? Ideally you’d already have another environment for this sort of work, but even then sometimes it’s handy…
It’s the first T-SQL Tuesday of 2021, and James Mcgillivray (b|t) is our host for January’s edition of this monthly blog party. This month’s topic is around how we escape with vacation/holiday plans. They gave us a few options on what to blog about and I’m going to take you on a virtual trip to…
Well 2020 was certainly an interesting year. I’m pretty sure none of us could have predicted how the world would look now and it won’t be regarded as the best year ever. However, there were definitely still some bright points I’d like to make note of before setting some targets for 2021. Looking back on…
This was the 3rd year I participated in the Advent of Code (AoC). If you haven’t heard of AoC, it’s an advent calendar of coding puzzles. Each day between December 1st and 25th a two part puzzle is released, you can use whatever language you want to solve it, with the goal being just to…
It’s December, the last T-SQL Tuesday for 2020. I’ve managed to participate in seven this year, including hosting in February – I wonder if in 2021 I will be able to complete a full year. I always look forward to these monthly blog parties, so thanks to Lisa for hosting this month. Lisa has asked…
Last week I gave a presentation at Data South West on dbachecks and dbatools. One of the questions I got was whether you could run dbachecks against Azure SQL Databases, to which I had no idea. I always try to be prepared for potential questions that might come up, but I had only been thinking…