I’m writing this post because I’ve been mired in configuring a bunch of distributed availability groups for a client, and while the feature is technically solid, the lack of tooling can make it a challenge to implement. Specifically, I’m implementing these distributed AGs (please don’t use the term DAG as you’ll piss off Allan Hirt, […]
Author: jdanton1
How Do I Make MySQL Highly Available with Open Source Tools?
This is clickbait post title, sorry. You are here now. The correct answer is that you should purchase MySQL as a database service from your favorite cloud provider (Google, Amazon, and Azure all offer prebuilt database as a service offerings) because they have gone through the trouble of making their solution highly available. I’ll speak […]
Adding an Azure Active Directory User to Azure SQL Database with Automation
My teammate Meagan (b|t) messaged me in Teams yesterday afternoon to say “Joey, the client created a new database using your automated process, and my ETL user (which is a AAD user) didn’t get created, can you fix it?” Well, after a quick perusal of emails I remembered that I had the asked the client […]
What Do You Want Your Professional Association to Be?
I wanted to write a post about the things I think PASS does well and are foundational to the future with or without the PASS organization. Before I address that I want to speak to an ethical matter related to the new PASS Pro service offering. Every year for PASS Summit, speakers sign an agreement […]
Managing Statistics in Azure SQL Database Serverless
One of the only things platform as a service databases like Azure SQL Database do not do for you is actively manage column and index statistics. While backups, patches, and even integrity checks are built into the platform services, managing your metadata is not. Since Azure SQL Database lacks a SQL Sever Agent for scheduling, […]
In Order to Save PASS, We Need to Fire C&C
Let’s talk through the current situation PASS faces. Your business has had its main revenue source devastated by a raging pandemic. To raise revenue from other sources you plan to announce a new online learning and networking service. Except your website is down for five hours on the morning of the rollout, and even after […]
Practical Security for Your Enterprise Application /s
So let’s talk about some practical things you can do that don’t require any effort on your part. I recently had a chance to talk to Flip Jupiter, CTO at a stealth startup Software as a Service company about their security practices.
Running Scheduled Tasks Against Azure SQL Database
If you’ve worked with Microsoft SQL Server for any period of time, you are familiar with the SQL Server Agent. The Agent, which remains mostly unchanged since I started working with in 1999, is a fairly robust job scheduler that can also alert you in the event of job failures or system errors. I feel […]
You Should Push Back on Your Software Vendors
I’ve seen two twitter discussions in the last two days about terrible software vendor practices. The first was a vendor who wanted to install binaries on the C: drive (and only the C: drive) of the server hosting the SQL Server database for the application. The other was a vendor who didn’t support using replication […]
PASS–An Organization in Trouble
PASS is an organization that has helped my career at many levels. I’ve served as a user group leader, a SQL Saturday organizer, a regional mentor, and spoken at PASS events around the world. PASS has a big problem–its main revenue source is the annual PASS Summit, which isn’t happening in person this year due […]