Question

I feel that my shop has a hole because we don’t have a solid process in place for versioning our database schema changes. We do a lot of backups so we’re more or less covered, but it’s bad practice to rely on your last line of defense in this way.

Surprisingly, this seems to be a common thread. Many shops I have spoken to ignore this issue because their databases don’t change often, and they basically just try to be meticulous.

However, I know how that story goes. It’s only a matter of time before things line up just wrong and something goes missing.

Are there any best practices for this? What are some strategies that have worked for you?

Answer 1

Must read Get your database under version control. Check the series of posts by K. Scott Allen.

When it comes to version control, the database is often a second or even third-class citizen. From what I’ve seen, teams that would never think of writing code without version control in a million years– and rightly so– can somehow be completely oblivious to the need for version control around the critical databases their applications rely on. I don’t know how you can call yourself a software engineer and maintain a straight face when your database isn’t under exactly the same rigorous level of source control as the rest of your code. Don’t let this happen to you. Get your database under version control.