devops DevOps - Introduction to Streamlined Deployments As stated in the previous article, DevOps is the answer to the question, "what do I have to change in my process to be able to and want to deploy to production 10 times a day with zero downtime?" The number 10 was not just some random number
Continuous Delivery DevOps Introduction For the longest time, I thought DevOps meant the developers were the ones who took over server maintenance from an operations team, be it a web admin or DBA. The only way for that to happen was to be up in the cloud. After all, the name says it all,
RedGate Redgate Command Line Tools One of the less common known facts about Redgate's DLM Automation suite is purchasing license grants the purchaser the right to use to command line versions of SQL Data Compare and SQL Compare. Seems strange, right? Well when you really boil it down to the basic parts, the
RedGate Static Data with Multiple Database Tenants The loan origination system my team and I are responsible for have 20 tables marked as static data in Redgate's SQL Source Control. One example of static data is a tile type. The loan origination system has a dashboard made up of multiple tiles. There are six different
RedGate Using SQL Source Control to Filter Out Unwanted Items Everything written on this site is how to get a database change automatically pushed up through the environments. But that was for the entire database. There are some parts of the database where they shouldn't be put under source control or shouldn't be promoted. Now you
RedGate Branching with Redgate SQL Source Control A couple of years ago my team and I decided to change the name of a column in a loan origination system. 99% of the time this was no big deal. However, this was the primary key identity column used to uniquely identify a loan in the application. Renaming a
RedGate Rollbacks with Automated Database Deployments Rolling back a database deployment is one the most complicated topics with Automated Database Deployments. The code is rather easy to rollback, just deploy the previous version of the code package and call it good. It is just as easy to rollback database schema changes using Redgate's Database
RedGate How Redgate Helped Define Our Process Without the help of Redgate, Farm Credit Services of America's automated database deployment process would not be where it is today. I'm not just talking about their tooling. Their employees have been an invaluable resource. In September 2014 Redgate sent a pair of employees, Alex Yates,
Heartland Developers Conference Presenting at Heartland Developers Conference Being an introvert, the idea of standing in front of a hundred or so people getting ready to speak for 45 minutes would be the seventh layer of hell. It wasn't. In fact, one of my former co-workers took a picture of me a minute before the start
RedGate Using Gitflow and Redgate DLM Automation for Continuous Delivery One of the key reasons to use Redgate's Tooling is to deliver value faster to the business. In order to do that, it is important to have a branching policy in place. This is only possible with a local database and Redgate's tools. Prior to implementing
RedGate Scenarios not supported by Redgate DLM Automation Suite Redgate has built a fantastic Database Lifecycle Management (DLM) suite to help with automated database deployments. Their tools cover 95% of the scenarios most people will encounter day in and day out. But...it cannot cover 100% of the scenarios. The other 5% of the scenarios are what this post
RedGate Visual Studio Team Services Build with Redgate DLM Automation Build One of the great parts about Microsoft's new Visual Studio Team Services (formerly Visual Studio Online) build is the extensibility. Anybody can make custom build steps to bring in. Redgate has taken advantage of that extensibility and made a custom step so anyone can get up and running
RedGate Getting Started with Red Gate DLM Automation Suite Red Gate's DLM Automation Suite is the second half of the automated database deployments process. It takes the scripts that were created by SQL Source Control, builds a package, and then deploys that package to the various database environments (test, staging, production, etc.). Red Gate has built the
Automation Database Changes - Build Once, Deploy Anywhere A core concept of continuous delivery is build once, deploy anywhere. The idea behind it is simple, the code is built once and deployed to all the servers throughout the various environments. For example, if you had a development, testing, staging and production server, you would build once before deploying
Automated Database Deployments Automated Database Deployments - Getting Buy-in Automated Database Deployments is rather disruptive. But it is disruptive in a good way. Depending on the company, database deployments could be a "wild west" process where every team has their way of deploying changes. Getting any sense of consistency is going to be difficult. When I was
RedGate Getting Started with Red Gate SQL Source Control If you are using SQL Server and are looking at putting your database under source control then the best in class program is Red Gate's SQL Source Control. It seamlessly integrates with SQL Management Studio minimizing the learning curve. It supports all the major source control systems, GIT,
RedGate Using Static Data in Red Gate's SQL Source Control One area where Red Gate's SQL Source Control needs a little more information is the Static Data Feature. It is very easy to run into problems with it. Don't get me wrong, Red Gate's SQL Source Control is a fantastic tool. Their goal is
Secure Development Use ExceptionFilter to hide errors in your WebApi One of the more common security mistakes is exposing too much information to our users. In the beginning of ASP.NET we had the famous "yellow screen of death." This screen was helpful to the developers trying to debug the program, it contained the error message, the stack
Learning 7 Lessons from being a lead developer By no means am I the best Lead Application Developer. But I have had the job for since 2014 and I haven't been fired yet. So I must be doing something right. Lead Application Developer is one of those jobs I really had to grow into. Scratch that,
Secure Development Featured Use ActionFilters to lock down ASP.NET WebAPI Action filters are one of those little used but powerful features of the ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebAPI stack. Most people have heard of them or are at the very least aware of them, but few have taken the time to learn them. Outside of exception handling, the
Learning Staying up to date on technology while working on a large project I really enjoy the start of a project. That is when we get to decide on what technology we are going to use. When I became a Lead Application Developer back in early 2014 I went to a team who was about to start up a new project. It was
.NET Secure Development Protect Your Cookies from XSS One of the more favorite attacks with Cross Site-Scripting (XSS) is to hijack another user's session. This attack is known as session hijacking (shocking!). When it boils down to it, session hijacking is no different than you using a public computer and forgetting to sign-out and another person
Secure Development Prevent XSS Exploits - Content Security Policy Header Ahh XSS exploits. A nice buzzword in security conferences and classes. It sounds so cool and mysterious with the X in the front. But what is it really? How can it possibly harm my site and my users. It is actually pretty simple when it comes down to it. A
Secure Development Secure .NET Development Introduction There is a fine line between a secure .NET Web Application and an insecure .NET Web Application. A handful of tweaks here and there can make a world of difference Back in March, the company I work for, Farm Credit Services of America, paid for co-worker and me to fly
Continuous Delivery Getting to Continuous Delivery Continuous Delivery allows us as developers to respond quickly to feedback to ensure we are meeting the business needs. Being able to respond quickly to changes the business needs without putting underdo strain on our resources will help us deliver value to the company and by extension our customers. Definitions
