Building DLM Consultants has been a hugely rewarding journey. I’ve learned so much, and I’ve had a whole bunch of great experiences. It’s been far more profitable than I ever thought it would be. Business continues to run just fine. But, I’m tired of consultant life. During the first couple of years of DLM I was always at airports. I…
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PowerShell: Write-Host or Write-Output?
Use Write-Output. (Almost all the time.) (You can probably stop reading now if you like.) Generally, use Write-Host if you want to make the text a funny colour etc – but that’s not always supported anyway. If you want to read more and learn about various edge cases etc, cool. Lot’s of people have written much longer blog posts on…
Source control and automated deployment for SQL Agent Jobs
One of my customers asked me how to source control and deploy their SQL Server Agent Jobs. I spent some time figuring it out this morning. This is what I learned. Part 1 – Scripting out a job First, we need to script out the job. To test this I created a test job on my machine using SQL Server…
Job done
In 2016 I quit Redgate. I sent this email to my team when I left. It was scary and emotional to leave the best job of my life and to step out into the big, wide world as my own boss. Earlier this year I started a temporary part-time contract with them to fill a short-term vacancy in their pre-sales…
A new chapter
I wasn’t kidding when I tweeted this a few days ago: Yesterday marked three years since my life changing decision to start DLM Consultants. It’s been a good three years. And I suspect the next three years will be even better. https://t.co/TYyz8lXvox — Alex Yates (@_AlexYates_) May 10, 2019 Every syllable of that tweet had been considered very carefully. The…
How to call the Azure DevOps Services API with PowerShell on hosted build agents
The problem My customer has a data warehouse solution. It consists of nine databases with a well defined architecture. They need to be deployed in a specific order – the source database first, followed by various dependant databases in sequence. Due to the tight coupling of the databases, they all exist in the same git repo in Azure DevOps Services, with…
Feedback on the new DLM Workshops
Just a quick note to share my excitement about how well the first iteration of our new and improved DLM Workshops went! The first workshop ran on UK hours earlier this month. It was the first time we hosted the VMs ourselves and the first time we ran a public course using TFS/VSTS and it went really well. We now…
Show me your Code of Conduct or I don’t go
A quick declaration: I’ve been thinking about which events I should and should not be attending this year. There are so many, it’s hard to choose. One of the issues that I’ve been becoming increasingly aware of is the importance of a code of conduct to so many people in our industry. Many folks feel uncomfortable attending events if there…
Speaking Mentors
I’m one of the organisers of SQL Relay and I’m always looking for new speakers. There aren’t enough new people speaking at community events and that’s sad. It doesn’t promote fresh ideas and thinking. On Wednesday evening last week I was thinking about this and I was feeling generous so I casually made an offer on Twitter as I left…
Your branching strategy should mirror your reality
People have their religions about the “right” way to do branching. Unfortunately, the real world is rarely that simple. There is the “always develop on main” tribe, who attest that branches are evil and anything other than working on main means you aren’t doing continuous integration, which makes you evil. There is the “do all your work on branches” tribe,…