A free email course on how to use tSQLt including the technical aspects of writing unit tests AND the art of writing repeatable, using unit tests for even the most complicated T-SQL code

UPDATE: I thought that if I got a certain number by October 1st I would run the course but in two days I had three times the number of people subscribe than my initial target so I have closed the first course, sign up if you want to join the waitlist or the next course!

NEW UPDATE: Enroll in the course here: https://courses.agilesql.club/p/unit-testing-sql-server-code-using-tsqlt

Unit testing helps us to write better code, make rapid changes to our code and has been generally seen as a good idea for about 10 years. Writing tests for T-SQL code is made much easier by using tSQLt but there is quite a high barrier to entry both in terms of the technical skills in getting tSQLt running and also how to approach large code bases of, sometimes, unfriendly T-SQL code and taming the code with unit tests.

I saw on slack recently a question about how the ssis file enumeraror orders (or more specifically doesn’t order) files. I have been thinking about ssis quite a lot lately and whil I am in no hurry to start using it day to day it is quite an interesting tool.

So anyway, I saw this question that went like:

“does anyone know in what order files are processed in ‘Foreach File Enumerator’?
I used to think it was alphabetically but after some testing this is not always the case?
Second part is there anyway to specify the order by say size or date?”

K-SSIS-ed - View any property or script in SSIS with a single click

A cross platform re-imagined IDE and SSIS package viewer with one goal to allow a developer to get to any property, including a c# or vb.net script within a single click and one second.

For support, please raise an issue: https://github.com/GoEddie/K-SSIS-ed-docs

Releases: https://github.com/GoEddie/K-SSIS-ed-docs/releases

SQL Cover is a tool to measure code coverage in T-SQL. This will tell you how much of your database code your unit tests are exercising.

You can read more about it:

https://the.agilesql.club/blogs/Ed-Elliott/2016-04-08/SQLCover-Code-Coverage-For-SQL-Server-T-SQL

You can get the source code from:

https://github.com/GoEddie/SQLCover

You can download it from:

https://github.com/GoEddie/SQLCover/releases/

For help feel free to ping me.

Articles / Posts about SQL Cover:

https://www.red-gate.com/blog/building/sql-cover https://documentation.red-gate.com/display/SR1/Using+SQL+Cover+with+SQL+Release+PowerShell+cmdlets http://www.jankowskimichal.pl/en/2016/09/sql-unit-tests-coverage-report/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork

Redgate:

Redgate kindly sponsored the initial version of SQLCover and I am most greatful to David Atkinson who really helped to shape what we have ended up with.

What is the SSDT Dev Pack

It is basically a collection of tools that I find make developing in for SQL Server in SSDT better or easier. I will never have the time on my own to do as much for t-sql that resharper does for t-sql but this is a start and maybe someone will invest in tools for t-sql developers at some point :)

The general idea is that if I want to do something and can make it re-usable then I will add it here. If anyone has any ideas for a tool that they would find useful please feel free to fork it on github and add it, or send me the details and if I have time and I think it is useful I will add it in myself.

DevOps isn’t running SQL Server in a container and pushing code to it from Jenkins

When we talk about DevOps we envision that we have the ability to check-in code, spin up a new environment, deploy, test and push that code to production and be in the pub at 4.

We know that by having the right tooling in place we can make releases more reliable and more frequent enabling us to deploy the changes that the business want when they want them rather than every x days/weeks/months/years/decades. This outcome is best for everyone, no one loses and the path to fun and profit is that, fun and profitable.

Every now and then I come across this error in SSDT, normally when trying to publish and the odd thing is that the description never matches the actual cause (if you desperate for the cause it is because you can’t connect). The thing I like about the description is the way it tries to tell you what is wrong and what server you are connecting to but it fails at both and instead tells you about an unrelated error and a database name instead of a server name.

I have upgraded the ssdt dev pack to support visual studio 2017 and fixed a couple of minor annoyances and have started to think about how to improve it going forward.

The first feature of sorts is the ability to clear the connection used by the quick deployer without having to restart visual studio.

Secondly I am pretty convinced that the main thing people use it for is the quick deploy, the tSQLt test builder and I use the keyword formatters so I have moved everything else to underneath a menu item saying “deprecated” - if anyone really wants one of those features then let me know and I will keep it but I will likely remove them at some point.

I have been quite interested by vs code and have been using it more and more recently. I use it for all my GO (#golang FTW) work and also powershell and I have been toying with the sql tools team’s sql extension which is great. For a long time I have thought about bringing the SSDT experience to other IDE’s like Jetbrains IntelliJ but because I have been using vscode quite a lot recently and separately I have been doing more and more javascript and typescript I thought it would be interesting to see how hard it would be to write a vscode extension that lets me build dacpac’s.

This one is for the DacFx nuts out there, it can’t be a very big club but judging from the occasional emails I get about it, the quality is very high ha ha.

If you have a TSqlModel and you want to make a change to it, you have a couple of choices:

- Create a new model and copy over everything
- Use AddOrUpdateScript

AddOrUpdate can only update scripts that you add (i.e. Know the name of) so if you get the model from a dacpac you are out of luck.