Automated Database Provisioning for Development and Testing

If your development team needs to work on anonymised copies of the current production database, and if changes are being delivered rapidly as well, that could mean a lot of time and routine DevOps work copying databases. SQL Clone was designed for tasks like this. Grant Fritchey investigates whether you save time, effort and scripting over the more traditional approach, and at what point it makes sense to use it.

Creating a Robust SSIS Development Environment using the SSIS Catalog

Discover how to integrate features of Visual Studio and the SSIS Catalog for an efficient development and deployment environment.

Automating the Setup of the Local Developer Machine

On both Windows and Linux, the chore of setting up a development workstation can take several days, and there always seem to be a few configuration settings that get missed. You can reduce the time and tedium dramatically by automating the process by using Vagrant to set up the operating system, followed by your choice of provisioning, configuration management and orchestration applications such as Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt, Docker, Chocolatey and Boxstarter. Vishwas shows how to make it easy to do with Vagrant, Chocolatey and Boxstarter.

Development Delusions: That it is Enough to Build a Better Mousetrap

You've written a superb, clever, application that you are trying to encourage your colleagues to use. They're not interested. Why? You've neglected the documentation. Surely, the saying goes 'Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door'? Nope, not without comprehensive and complete documentation and marketing, it won't. Documentation is the secret of ensuring that good software will succeed.

Generic, parameterised, create DB script

A script to be used as part of development deployments where new databases are required, so as to provide standardisation.

The Exploratory Testing Chrome Plugin

If all your application testing is done by test experts, who know how to record images, do screen-capture, write issue-reports to TFS more appropriate and consistent format and so on, you probably don't need the 'Exploratory Testing' chrome plug-in. Otherwise, it is worth checking out Ambily KK's walkthrough.

Proper Storage and Handling of Personal Names

As database developers, we may need to rethink the way we store and handle personal names

Introduction to Row Level Security in SQL 2016

In SQL 2016 several new security features gets introduced which will help users to protect their data in many ways. New security feature Row Level Security (RLS) which implements the security inside the database itself, not at application level.

Do I Want to Design My Own Transaction Log?

The processing of the Transaction Log seems simple to reproduce, but be sure you consider all the possibilities.

Numeric Data Types