10.4. Creating Change Scripts

Creating change scripts is never a fun task for a DBA. That being said, nothing is more satisfying than a perfect deployment to four different environments. The only way to do this "perfect" deployment is to invest a lot of time in good script writing, like the one that will be shown shortly, or to invest in a tool.

There are more tools on the market than ever to help a DBA package and deploy the changes. For example, Red-Gate (http://www.red-gate.com) can compare two databases (test and production, for example) and package the change scripts to move production up to the same level. This same type of tool is available through many vendors such as ApexSQL, Idera, and Quest, to name a few. None of these tools eliminates human intervention entirely. You must have some interaction with the program to ensure that a change that was not meant to be deployed is not sent to production.