March 18, 2002 at 8:46 am
I have a series on how I do it. I could do more automation, but since the release cycle is so quick (1-2 weeks for me), automation may not be worth it. However, the actual deployment of the scripts is automated to minimize mistakes or forgetting something.
I have a utility that scripts the database and checks it into sourcesafe. Could easily change this to get things out, but it's the "deciding" what to check out that messes up my automation process. After all, it's not often I do a wholesale checkout of anything.
Steve Jones
March 16, 2010 at 11:01 am
I maintain all my scripts in SourceSafe (or whatever source control my clients are using). Whenever changes are released to production, the source control is labelled.
When it comes time to build a release, I extract all files changed since the last release and deploy them to the server(s) using a utility I have written.
Depending on your environment the above might not work for you but what I'm sure will be helpful is the utility I use for pushing scripts to the SQL Servers.
About 10 years ago I was asked to come up with a way to pass database releases to an implementation team for release to test and production environments. The process needed to be as simple as possible since implementers were not always SQL Server people.
I wrote some VBscript that read a configuration file which listed all the SQL scripts to be released and pushed them to SQL Server within a transaction. Over time this application has become more and more polished and I have now rewritten it in VB.Net.
It's completely free and can download it here: www.sqldart.com
I know similar results can be achieved with osql, sqlcmd, etc. but I find working with a GUI much easier than writing batch scripts (in languages other than T-SQL of course).
I hope more people find it useful and start using it. Many of my past colleagues and clients depend on it for their database releases.
The website is brand new so there aren't any comments yet but if you like it or have suggestions, please let me know.
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