When you are amid a pesky IT issue, it can be difficult determining whether the problem is down to a bug/system fault or human error. Like this recent example involving Azure Data Factory illustrates, it is generally best to assume the latter, to avoid any prolonged difficulty.
We saw a few weeks ago how to utilise Azure Active Directory (AAD) Security Groups to manage Azure SQL database access at scale. When using this feature, you must ensure database changes are deployed out using an AAD administrator account or similar, a task which may be difficult to achieve in an Azure DevOps Pipeline.
Azure SQL Server has long supported the ability to use Azure Active Directory user accounts to access and work with databases. What you may not know is that it is also possible to add users via membership of a security group, a feature which, I believe, is incredibly useful for managing large-scale deployments.
Web application releases are a scary affair and, depending on the criticality of your system, you may need to put yourself in a position where changes, such as a SQL Server database upgrades, can be rolled back immediately. Fortunately, when using Azure DevOps, it's easier to do then you may think...
Is it just me or is British Summer Time (BST) AKA Daylight Saving Time (DST) an utterly pointless endeavour these days? Admittedly, on its introduction in 1916, it fulfilled a sensible objective - to provide more daylight hours during the summer. For agricultural, construction or other services that are reliant on sufficient light to carry [...]
When it comes to handling large datasets in a formal, structured and highly scalable manner, nothing beats SQL Server. Having worked with the product for almost six years, I always look forward to the opportunity of putting together some SQL queries or to build out a new database. I think of it as a nice [...]
When considering whether or not to shift your existing SQL workloads to a single database offering on Azure SQL, one of the major pros is the breadth of capabilities the service can offer when compared with other vendors or in comparison to SQL Server on an Azure Virtual Machine. A list of these may include: [...]
If you are looking for an easy-to-use and highly expandable mail relay service, SendGrid represents the most developer-friendly solution out in the market today. What's even better is that it's available on Azure, making it the ideal choice if you are developing an existing solution on the Azure stack. The best thing I like about [...]
Microsoft Flow is a tool that I increasingly have to bring front and centre when considering how to straightforwardly accommodate certain business requirements. The problem I have had with it, at times, is that there are often some notable caveats when attempting to achieve something that looks relatively simple from the outset. A good example [...]
The world of database security and protection can be a difficult path to tread at times. I often find myself having to adopt a "tin-foil hat" approach, obsessing over the smallest potential vulnerability that a database could be compromised with. This thought process can be considered easy compared with any protective steps that need to [...]