How to publish database changes – SQL Tools

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Here is a scenario that database developers face on regular bases: the implementation of application changes is often accompanied by changes in the database(s) that support the application. Some of the most common database changes required are:

• Changing table column types to accommodate bigger values;
• Adding new columns to tables;
• Adding whole new tables;
• Creating new views and / or modifying existing views
• Creating new stored procedures and / or modifying existing stored procedures

You have completed your work and are now ready to publish the new build of your application. The challenge is that those database changes must be published together with the new build of the application otherwise your application will not work the way it is supposed to.

Here is how we managed those database changes prior to building xSQL Object: the developer who were working on the project would have to script out every change they were making on the database side (the use of the GUI tools to make changes on the database schema was prohibited other than for executing those change scripts), and diligently organize those change scripts which would then be submitted to the DBA who was responsible for reviewing and deploying those scripts. The issues we faced with this approach were:

• Missed changes – some change scripts would not make it to the script repository. Those missed database changes would only be discovered when the application would error out because an object was missing or a type didn’t match etc. Those missed changes would results in many wasted hours and frustration. 
• Failure to execute – some scripts would fail to execute successfully because of dependencies. Ordering the scripts is a painful, time consuming process especially when multiple developers are involved. 
• Significant amount of time consumed in creating rollback scripts that would make it possible to reverse the changes if something went wrong.

Overall, this was a very expensive and error prone process, and that was the motivation for us to build a tool that would completely automate this process and eliminate the problems. The result was the release of version 1 of xSQL Object some 8 years ago. Here is how xSQL Object solves this problem:

1. The developers can make the changes they need to make on the database without having to worry about keeping track of those changes and creating change scripts and rollback scripts. 
2. When it is time to publish changes to staging or production environments you do the following:
1. Launch xSQL Object and instruct it to compare the schema of the development database where those changes were made with the target database where you want to publish those changes. 
2. xSQL Object will compare the schemas and show you exactly what changes have been made. It will then generate a synchronization script that when executed will make all those changes into the target database in the proper order. It will also generate the “rollback” script that will allow you to reverse those changes if necessary. 
3. Review the script and execute against the target. 
4. Done!

From many hours of tedious work with questionable results we have automated the process and brought the time required to complete the task down to a few minutes of easy work with guaranteed results.

Download your copy of xSQL Object today and see for yourself what you have been missing. There is no better way to spend the next 5 minutes of your time than downloading and installing a tool that will save you many valuable hours and for which you will likely not have to pay anything since the free lite edition is probably all you need.