Many years ago, I was working with a great DBA. Seriously, a very smart and capable guy. He told me, “We need to put the database into source control, just like app code.” And I just laughed. Not because I disagreed with him. I knew he was right, but I had tried, several times, to do just that. See, I’m not really a DBA. I’m a developer. I knew that code (and all the T-SQL that describes databases is code) needed to be versioned, sourced, tracked and audited. But great googly moogly, it was not an easy thing to do.

I first tried just exporting the entire database into a script and then occasionally checking that script into source control. Yay! Mission Accomplished… Well, I had a database in source control, yes, but I didn’t have any of the great stuff that went with it, most of all, a way to deploy from source control.

Next, I tried just storing the stuff that changed most, procedures. But, I had to store everything as an ALTER, or, I had to store it all as a DROP/CREATE and store the security settings and extended properties. I tried both. Neither satisfied and it was WAY too easy for someone else to modify a script the wrong way and bring the entire thing crashing down. And, not to mention the fact that any and all structural changes outside of stored procedures had to be built manually, or using a compare tool to generate them (but not the procs, cause we have those in source control, remember) by comparing prod & dev or qa & dev or something & something… Oh yeah, that was fun.

Man, it was painful back then. But now, there are several ways you can do this using Microsoft and/or 3rd party tools.

Why aren’t you?

Seriously, most of you aren’t. I’ve been going all over the country teaching a class on database deployments (next one is in Cleveland if you’re interested) and I know most people don’t put their databases into source control. Of course, I’m pretty sure most people don’t talk to their Dev teams if they can help it, and it does seem like most Dev teams seem to be on less than a perfectly chatty basis with their DBAs. is that the cause? The thing is, you are experiencing pain in terms of time spent, mistakes made, slower deployments, less frequent deployments, possibly even down time, all because you don’t do your deployments right. And deployments start from source control.

Developers have spent the last 30 years or so figuring out better and better ways to arrive at functional code in the hands of their customers (internal or external) as fast as possible, as accurately as possible. Over the same 30 years, DBAs have been figuring out how to better and better protect the information under our charge ensuring that it’s backed up, available, performing well, and always on (to use a phrase). My suggestion to you, data pro, talk to your developers. Figure out what they do and how they do it. Take advantage of their years and years of process improvement and apply what they’ve learned to your database development and deployment.

There’s a new concept growing out there. It’s fairly well established within the *nix communities, DevOps. It’s the realization that the world doesn’t begin and end with your database/server/application. Instead, your database/server/application is completely dependent on the database/server/application that it needs to run. Notice, no one is more important here. We’re talking about creating mechanisms for teams to deliver functionality to their clients (internal or external). And it all starts with the realization that there are parts of the process that some of us are better at than others. Developers know how to develop and deploy within teams. Let’s learn from them. And the start, well, that’s source control.

So, is your database under source control… for real. If not, get it there. The excuses I used to have are gone. That means the excuses you have now are probably gone too.

Fair warning, I may use the term DevOps more in the future.