powershell – sqlsunday.com

Dynamically updating Azure Network Security Groups

Today’s post is not about SQL Server, but if you’re working in Azure from a dynamic IP address, you might still find it useful.

Recently, my home ISP has started changing my public IP address. This causes me some headache because I have a couple of Azure Network Security Group rules (think of them as firewall rules) that specifically allow my home IP access to all of my Azure resources. When my home IP changes, those rules have to be updated accordingly.

So I made a PowerShell-based solution to automatically maintain them.

Anonymize your dev databases!

I’ve been working on a little gadget for a while now, and today I finally got around to completing it and so now I’ve published it for everyone to try out. It’s a web API (wait, wait, don’t go away – it’s for database people!) that creates a randomized list of names, addresses, etc.

In this post, I’ll show you how easy it is to use this service to anonymize a development or test database so you don’t have all that personally identifiable information floating around.

Scan hundreds of SQL Saturday raffle tickets. Fast.

If you’re an organizer, sponsor and/or an exhibitor at a SQL Saturday event, you often collect raffle tickets from attendees. In exchange for giving you their contact information, they have the opportunity to win cool raffle prizes.

Here’s the thing, though. Raffle tickets can be a bit painful to scan on your mobile phone. You point the phone at the QR code, then click the URL that opens up the browser, after which the SQL Saturday web service takes another second or two (or three) to load. This is fine when you have just a few tickets, but it can be mindnumbing if you have hundreds.

What can I say, I’m lazy.

How to set up a beautiful Powershell Core terminal on Mac OS

I just recently had the opportunity to sit with Aaron Nelson and go through some really cool Powershell features, and I’m certainly going to spend time getting to know Powershell a lot better. If you didn’t know, Powershell isn’t exclusive to Windows anymore – you can actually run a basic set of Powershell features, called Powershell Core, on Mac OS and Linux as well.

But there’s a problem.

Encrypting SQL Server connections with Let’s Encrypt certificates

Encrypting your SQL Server’s TDS connections should be high on your list of things to do if you’re concerned with the privacy of your data. This often boils down to one big problem: can you get a valid certificate without paying a ton of money, and will it work with SQL Server?

So follow me down the rabbit hole, as we work out the steps to using Let’s Encrypt to create (and auto-renew!) a certificate for SQL Server. This is going to get technical.