Agile Database – Part 3: Features for a release system

Possible features for an Agile Database Release System:

Allows construction of a database at a particular version
Allows migration from an existing database to a later version
Allows migration from an existing database to an earlier version
Human readable format for releases
Release ‘action’ available on multiple environments (ie various operating systems) allowing development on a different platform than production
Provides a complete history of changes for each database object
Provides a current creation script for each database object
The source code can be branched and merged
Allows multiple developers to work with/on the same database source code, at the same time
Supports an ‘automated build’ / ‘continuous integration’ enviroment
Automatically records database changes by the developer in their development area
Supports use of parameters to configure variable parts of the release (eg the password part of “CREATE USER warren IDENTIFIED BY xyzzy”)

Warren Mayocchi