In one of Grant Fritchey's presentations at SQL Server Connections recently, he talked about treating the databaese like code, and storing the changes you make, the DDL for the objects, and more, in a version control system of some sort. Grant had a number of points to make about why this is good, not the least of which is that it brings the DBAs closer to the developers. 

It was a great presentation and it made perfect sense to me. I've always tried to store my DDL code in some sort of VCS, checking it and out as needed. I found it helpful for keeping track of which version of an object was released with which deployment. This also helped me to organize the changes which I was going to release, branching them away from the full list of changes stored in source control.

Databases don't inherently lend themselves to source control, with the various levels of state that must be stored, the strict ordering of changes, and more, but by imposing a little discipline, you can include the code and keep track of everything important for deploying changes. It's not easy however, especially since the process of building a current version of your database from VCS would not be the latest change to each object. Objects are built with CREATE statements, but changes over time are made with ALTER statements. A little creativity will help you here, as will any number of third party tools that can keep a current set of CREATE statements handy.

If you're not storing your DDL in a VCS, I'd urge you to start. You might not need the features often, but when you do, having versions available can be career-saving. There are a number of free VCS systems available as well, so there's no monetary reason why you can't start tracking your code tomorrow.

Steve Jones

SQL Source Control from Red Gate Software can make version control possible from within SSMS. Download your trial version today.

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