August 6, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Hi Folks,
does anyone know of any reliable products ou there for revision control of database schema changes?
thanks
August 6, 2008 at 9:41 pm
i've been using ddl triggers for some time; i've caught our vendors tampering with our dbs on more than one occasion.
August 6, 2008 at 10:39 pm
hi Lenny,
I have been thinking about that too. Can I ask how does you database run with that, what type of hardware do you use?how big is you db (i.e how many objects) ? do you put triggers on all the objects in the db?
August 6, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Hi
I do not use any tools , so what i do may not help you. But still... All the schema changes are stored in a folder createad for each date. An entry for these changes is kept in a xl file which includes "who" did what change. This file is in VSS.
The above said works only if a very few people make the changes to the db.
If there are many people who make db changes you want to record who did the changes, its best to use database scoped DDL triggers.
"Keep Trying"
August 7, 2008 at 6:21 am
First, and most important, before you worry about a tool, you need to focus on your process. Discipline around how and when you deploy is more important than the tool used.
There are three tools I can recommend. Two I've used personally and one I've tested. DBGhost, that I've tested, works with source control to come up with versioned copies of your database. I wasn't crazy about some of its methods, but it really does seem like a pretty solid tool. Red Gate's SQL Compare, which I use almost daily, can not only compare existing databases, but it's capable of comparing against scripts as well as scripts within source control. In a lot of ways, it's similar to DBGhost, but I've been using it for so long, the company is great, and I like the way it works, that I find it just a bit more compelling. Finally, the big gun (that includes price tag as well as ability) is Microsoft's Visual Studio Team Edition for Databases, aka: DBPro, Data Dude, VSDB. VSDB is fantastic. It's not simply a method for deploying databases and comparing them against source code, like the other two tools, but it's a full fledged development environment, supporting multiple-environment tear down & deployments, unit testing of tsql code, data generation and more. But this is a case of you get what you pay for. It costs a bloody fortune.
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August 7, 2008 at 6:23 am
my auditing databases aren't all that big. i have one per server (for 4 servers) and they all send their data to one collection server. there's no special hardware; it's all software driven. whatever hardware runs your sql server will run all your ddl triggers. some triggers are database-level triggers, so they'll fire on things like CREATE USER, ALTER TABLE, DROP VIEW, etc., while others are at the server level and will fire on CREATE DATABASE, ALTER LOGIN, etc.
do a search in BoL for DDL triggers... you'll find everything you need there.
August 8, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I haven't used the Red Gate Compare tool, but the ApexSQL Diff product is quite good for comparing structure, code and data between databases. I find it extremely helpful in controlling roll-outs from QA to production.
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