Change Management

  • Currently when a Live database is updated I do a before an after comparison on some key tables (do a sum on Amounts and number of rows).

    Does anyone have any advice on practical steps that can be taken or have any useful links?

  • What kind of steps do you mean - automation? additional means of checking the tables?

    Off the top of my head I would suggest looking into the CHECKSUM and CHECKSUM_AGG functions:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189788.aspx

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188920.aspx

    Note that they create hashes so you can have 2 differing sets of source data give you the same value - keep using your counts as an additional verification if you need more accuracy.

  • Thanks for the links, it looks like a good supplement to my usual checks.

    To clarify my original post; by steps I mean any sanity checks that can be done to prove that data was not changed by accident in a database update such as when applying structural changes to accomodate new application functionality.

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