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Teams work on databases across multiple environments (e.g., Development, Test, QA/UAT, Production) and differences can happen in these databases over time. A hot fix applied directly to Production or a quick change applied in Test while troubleshooting are examples of how the schema can diverge from what’s expected. These differences are known as drift and can cause problems with deployments making them unpredictable and harder to troubleshoot.

Prior to working for a software company, I spent most of my career working for financial organizations. I have lots of friends who still do. Talking with one the other day, the question came up, what keeps you up at night? Her one word response was a little surprising: Fraud. Understand, she’s in charge of managing data at a bank. You’d expect maybe uptime, performance, high availability, any of the standard data management worries. Instead, it’s fraud.

Guided Shadow Configuration removes the setup overhead of shadow databases in Flyway Desktop, allowing teams to adopt migrations-based workflows quickly and safely with minimal configuration. A Shadow Database is a disposable, ‘sandbox’ database that Flyway uses to generate and verify migration scripts.

Once more in this series, we’re moving into areas where I’m not entirely comfortable. I haven’t built a PHP plugin and web page, ever. However, we’re going to put the LLM/AI and associated agents to work on this task. As with so much else when working with AI, it all starts with the prompt, so let’s go there.

SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare v16 introduces SQL Server 2025 support and improved credential security. Plus, SSMS 22 integration is coming soon. We have just released a new major version of SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare – version 16. This major version has two big items and one coming soon.

Because I don’t want to have to fight with our support team (they’re awesome, but busy) I decided that, initially, I’m going to host dbRosetta at ScaryDBA.com. I have full control of the web site, and I won’t be breaking Redgate Software entirely if I accidently do something silly. Before starting the process of developing our next prompt, or set of prompts, I discussed the project with CoPilot. We agreed to break the next part into two pieces.

Since I’m starting development with the dbRosetta database, and since I’m way more comfortable with databases than with code, I’m going to continue within the database sphere for a bit as we build out dbRosetta. My next step is to work with the AI to get a pipeline in place to take our database code and deploy it to Azure Flex Server.

In our latest Redgate Flyway Enterprise release, you can store a snapshot directly in the target database, making drift detection and rollback strategies easier and more reliable whether you’re using state-based or migrations-based deployments.

Redgate Monitor v14.1.0 now provides a simple, built-in integration with ServiceNow that uses its REST API directly. This replaces the older webhook-based approach and removes much of the setup and maintenance overhead.

Everyone wants to move faster with AI, but few are truly ready for it. This is where organizations can position themselves better as AI readiness isn’t just about algorithms, it’s about whether your data, systems, and teams are prepared to support intelligent automation safely and effectively.