跟踪对数据库所做的更改

Question

Background:

I have a MS SQL Server database and I want to track changes to it. For example if a column needed to be added or removed or a table needed to be dropped. Something similar to Version control for regular code.

The problem:

While looking around I saw that there were some tools that can be used:

• RedGate SQL Source Control
• Visual Studio Database project

I am more interested in knowing if either of these tools will track changes to my database? More specifically I have a TFS server that is the source control for my MVC code, can I use either of these with TFS? Will it allow us to restore from older versions? Will it allow multiple developers to work on the database simultaneously?

Answer 1

For this type of work, ApexSQL Source Control shown to be all that you need. With this SSMS add-in you can work directly on a database, and all of your changes will be tracked in real time .

Yes, several developers can work in the same time on the same database. When one developer works on a one or several objects, other developers can see which those objects are, and until the first one does not finish changing the others cannot change that object, they will not be allowed to. If by any case, object is changed wrong, previous version or any earlier version can be restored at any moment.

This add-in has all necessary options and features to allow the developers to work without losing time for checking changes made against object, since the add-in does that for them. And you can always see by whom, when and what that change is.

Answer 2

Being in the database version control space for 5 years (as director of product management at DBmaestro ) and having worked as a DBA for over two decades, I can tell you the simple fact that you cannot treat the database objects as you treat your Java, C# or other files and save the changes in simple DDL scripts.

There are many reasons and I'll name a few:

• Files are stored locally on the developer's PC and the change s/he makes do not affect other developers. Likewise, the developer is not affected by changes made by her colleague. In database this is (usually) not the case and developers share the same database environment, so any change that were committed to the database affect others.
• Publishing code changes is done using the Check-In / Submit Changes / etc. (depending on which source control tool you use). At that point, the code from the local directory of the developer is inserted into the source control repository. Developer who wants to get the latest code need to request it from the source control tool. In database the change already exists and impacts other data even if it was not checked-in into the repository.
• During the file check-in, the source control tool performs a conflict check to see if the same file was modified and checked-in by another developer during the time you modified your local copy. Again there is no check for this in the database. If you alter a procedure from your local PC and at the same time I modify the same procedure with code form my local PC then we override each other's changes.
• The build process of code is done by getting the label / latest version of the code to an empty directory and then perform a build – compile. The output are binaries in which we copy & replace the existing. We don't care what was before. In database we cannot recreate the database as we need to maintain the data! Also the deployment executes SQL scripts which were generated in the build process.
• When executing the SQL scripts (with the DDL, DCL, DML (for static content) commands) you assume the current structure of the environment match the structure when you create the scripts. If not, then your scripts can fail as you are trying to add new column which already exists.
• Treating SQL scripts as code and manually generating them will cause syntax errors, database dependencies errors, scripts that are not reusable which complicate the task of developing, maintaining, testing those scripts. In addition, those scripts may run on an environment which is different from the one you though it would run on.
• Sometimes the script in the version control repository does not match the structure of the object that was tested and then errors will happen in production!

There are many more, but I think you got the picture.

What I found that works is the following:

1. Use an enforced version control system that enforces check-out/check-in operations on the database objects. This will make sure the version control repository matches the code that was checked-in as it reads the metadata of the object in the check-in operation and not as a separated step done manually. This also allow several developers to work in parallel on the same database while preventing them to accidently override each other code.
2. Use an impact analysis that utilize baselines as part of the comparison to identify conflicts and identify if a change (when comparing the object's structure between the source control repository and the database) is a real change that origin from development or a change that was origin from a different path and then it should be skipped, such as different branch or an emergency fix.

An article I wrote on this was published here , you are welcome to read it.

Answer 3

If you're looking for a product that will track changes into TFS from your SQL Server automatically, I'd invite you take a look at our product, Sql Historian . It's different from most other SQL version control systems (including the ones you've listed) in that it does not require developers to perform a check-in ritual to synchronize version control with what's already committed to the db.

However, features common with Sql Historian and the other two systems you mention are: working with TFS, the ability to view older versions of your db objects, and allowing multiple users on the db at the same time.