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  • Django - Testing with parts of original database

    - by Murkin
    Hello everyone, My database has two types of entries: The very dynamic (users, comments, etc) and the more static (email templates, flat-pages). During testing I want a clean DB but with the real 'semi-static' data. Is there a way to make Django's testing system to load parts of the original DB ? Thanks

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  • Django: How to create a model dynamically just for testing

    - by muhuk
    I have a Django app that requires a settings attribute in the form of: RELATED_MODELS = ('appname1.modelname1.attribute1', 'appname1.modelname2.attribute2', 'appname2.modelname3.attribute3', ...) Then hooks their post_save signal to update some other fixed model depending on the attributeN defined. I would like to test this behaviour and tests should work even if this app is the only one in the project (except for its own dependencies, no other wrapper app need to be installed). How can I create and attach/register/activate mock models just for the test database? (or is it possible at all?) Solutions that allow me to use test fixtures would be great.

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  • SQL Server Database In Single User Mode after Failover

    - by jlichauc
    Here is a weird situation we experienced with a SQL Server 2008 Database Mirroring Failover. We have a pair of mirrored databases running in high-availability mode and both the principal and mirror showed as synchronized. As part of some maintenance I triggered a manual failover of the principal to the mirror. However after the failover the principal was now in single-user mode instead of the expected "Principal/Synchronized" state we usually get. The database had been in multi-user mode on the previous principal before this had happened. We ended up stopping all applications, restarting the SQL Server instances, and executing "ALTER DATABASE ... SET MULTI_USER" to bring the database back to the expected "Principal/Synchronized" state in a multi-user mode. Question. Does anyone know where SQL Server stores information about whether a database should be in single-user mode or not? I'm wondering if there is some system database or table that has this setting recorded somewhere. In particular we had an incident once with the database on the original principal (the one I was failing over to) where when trying to detach the database it was put into single-user mode. I'm wondering if that setting is cached somewhere and is the reason that SQL Server put it back into single-user mode after a failover.

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  • Testing REST webservices

    - by anjanb
    HI There, My organization is working on building RESTful webservices on JBoss appserver. The QA team is used to testing SOAP webservices so far using SoapUI. SoapUI has a new version that has REST capabilities. We're considering using that. 1) Are there any publicly available RESTful services available on the net for free that someone could test ? 2) What tools are available(and used) for testing RESTful web services ? Thank you in Advance, BR, ~A

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  • Testing WML documents without Nokia

    - by Steven Wright
    Are there any testing platforms out there for testing WAP/WML pages besides that provided by Nokia? I have tried to get ahold of the Nokia Mobile Internet Toolkit but it's too tied down with authentication and certificates etc. Nokia software is like Adobe and......sucks.

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  • Recommanded crossbrowser testing solution

    - by Kaaviar
    Hi, When developing for the web, one of the saddest issue might be crossbrowser testing. Is there a great solution for testing both on IE6, IE7, IE8, Chrome, Safari and Firefox ? I tried some web-based solutions but it's not really usable when working offline. Thx Boris

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  • Recommended crossbrowser testing solution

    - by Kaaviar
    Hi, When developing for the web, one of the saddest issue might be crossbrowser testing. Is there a great solution for testing both on IE6, IE7, IE8, Chrome, Safari and Firefox ? I tried some web-based solutions but it's not really usable when working offline. Thx Boris

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  • Using Rails and Rspec, how do you test that the database is not touched by a method

    - by Will Tomlins
    So I'm writing a test for a method which for performance reasons should achieve what it needs to achieve without using SQL queries. I'm thinking all I need to know is what to stub: describe SomeModel do describe 'a_getter_method' do it 'should not touch the database' do thing = SomeModel.create something_inside_rails.should_not_receive(:a_method_querying_the_database) thing.a_getter_method end end end EDIT: to provide a more specific example: class Publication << ActiveRecord::Base end class Book << Publication end class Magazine << Publication end class Student << ActiveRecord::Base has_many :publications def publications_of_type(type) #this is the method I am trying to test. #The test should show that when I do the following, the database is queried. self.publications.find_all_by_type(type) end end describe Student do describe "publications_of_type" do it 'should not touch the database' do Student.create() student = Student.first(:include => :publications) #the publications relationship is already loaded, so no need to touch the DB lambda { student.publications_of_type(:magazine) }.should_not touch_the_database end end end So the test should fail in this example, because the rails 'find_all_by' method relies on SQL.

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  • 4GB limitation on these embedded/express DBs good enough? what's next if limitation is reached?

    - by edwin.nathaniel
    I'm wondering how long a (theoretically) desktop-app can consume the full 4GB limitation of these express/embedded database products (SQL-Server Express, Oracle Express, SQLite3, etc) provided that big blobs will be stored in filesystem. Also what would be your strategy when it hits the 4GB? Archive the old DB Copy 1-3 months of data to the new DB (consider this as cache strategy?) Start using the new DB from this point onward (How do you access the old data?) I understand that the answer might varies depending on how much data you stored in the table/column. But please describe based on your experience (what kind of desktop-app, write/read heavy, how long will it reach according to your guess).

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  • Mocking ISession.Query<T>() for testing consumer

    - by TheCloudlessSky
    I'm trying to avoid using an in memory database for testing (though I might have to do this if the following is impossible). I'm using NHibernate 3.0 with LINQ. I'd like to be able to mock session.Query<T>() to return some dummy values but I can't since it's an extension method and these are pretty much impossible to test. Does anyone have any suggestions (other than using an in memory database) for testing session queries with LINQ?

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  • Java unit test coverage numbers do not match.

    - by Dan
    Below is a class I have written in a web application I am building using Java Google App Engine. I have written Unit Tests using TestNG and all the tests pass. I then run EclEmma in Eclipse to see the test coverage on my code. All the functions show 100% coverage but the file as a whole is showing about 27% coverage. Where is the 73% uncovered code coming from? Can anyone help me understand how EclEmma works and why I am getting the discrepancy in numbers? package com.skaxo.sports.models; import javax.jdo.annotations.IdGeneratorStrategy; import javax.jdo.annotations.IdentityType; import javax.jdo.annotations.PersistenceCapable; import javax.jdo.annotations.Persistent; import javax.jdo.annotations.PrimaryKey; @PersistenceCapable(identityType= IdentityType.APPLICATION) public class Account { @PrimaryKey @Persistent(valueStrategy=IdGeneratorStrategy.IDENTITY) private Long id; @Persistent private String userId; @Persistent private String firstName; @Persistent private String lastName; @Persistent private String email; @Persistent private boolean termsOfService; @Persistent private boolean systemEmails; public Account() {} public Account(String firstName, String lastName, String email) { super(); this.firstName = firstName; this.lastName = lastName; this.email = email; } public Account(String userId) { super(); this.userId = userId; } public void setId(Long id) { this.id = id; } public Long getId() { return id; } public String getUserId() { return userId; } public void setUserId(String userId) { this.userId = userId; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public String getEmail() { return email; } public void setEmail(String email) { this.email = email; } public boolean acceptedTermsOfService() { return termsOfService; } public void setTermsOfService(boolean termsOfService) { this.termsOfService = termsOfService; } public boolean acceptedSystemEmails() { return systemEmails; } public void setSystemEmails(boolean systemEmails) { this.systemEmails = systemEmails; } } Below is the test code for the above class. package com.skaxo.sports.models; import static org.testng.Assert.assertEquals; import static org.testng.Assert.assertNotNull; import static org.testng.Assert.assertTrue; import static org.testng.Assert.assertFalse; import org.testng.annotations.BeforeTest; import org.testng.annotations.Test; public class AccountTest { @Test public void testId() { Account a = new Account(); a.setId(1L); assertEquals((Long) 1L, a.getId(), "ID"); a.setId(3L); assertNotNull(a.getId(), "The ID is set to null."); } @Test public void testUserId() { Account a = new Account(); a.setUserId("123456ABC"); assertEquals(a.getUserId(), "123456ABC", "User ID incorrect."); a = new Account("123456ABC"); assertEquals(a.getUserId(), "123456ABC", "User ID incorrect."); } @Test public void testFirstName() { Account a = new Account("Test", "User", "[email protected]"); assertEquals(a.getFirstName(), "Test", "User first name not equal to 'Test'."); a.setFirstName("John"); assertEquals(a.getFirstName(), "John", "User first name not equal to 'John'."); } @Test public void testLastName() { Account a = new Account("Test", "User", "[email protected]"); assertEquals(a.getLastName(), "User", "User last name not equal to 'User'."); a.setLastName("Doe"); assertEquals(a.getLastName(), "Doe", "User last name not equal to 'Doe'."); } @Test public void testEmail() { Account a = new Account("Test", "User", "[email protected]"); assertEquals(a.getEmail(), "[email protected]", "User email not equal to '[email protected]'."); a.setEmail("[email protected]"); assertEquals(a.getEmail(), "[email protected]", "User email not equal to '[email protected]'."); } @Test public void testAcceptedTermsOfService() { Account a = new Account(); a.setTermsOfService(true); assertTrue(a.acceptedTermsOfService(), "Accepted Terms of Service not true."); a.setTermsOfService(false); assertFalse(a.acceptedTermsOfService(), "Accepted Terms of Service not false."); } @Test public void testAcceptedSystemEmails() { Account a = new Account(); a.setSystemEmails(true); assertTrue(a.acceptedSystemEmails(), "System Emails is not true."); a.setSystemEmails(false); assertFalse(a.acceptedSystemEmails(), "System Emails is not false."); } }

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  • How to unit test synchronized code

    - by gillJ
    Hi, I am new to Java and junit. I have the following peice of code that I want to test. Would appreciate if you could send your ideas about what's the best way to go about testing it. Basically, the following code is about electing a leader form a Cluster. The leader holds a lock on the shared cache and services of the leader get resumed and disposed if it somehow looses the lock on the cache. How can i make sure that a leader/thread still holds the lock on the cache and that another thread cannot get its services resumed while the first is in execution? public interface ContinuousService { public void resume(); public void pause(); } public abstract class ClusterServiceManager { private volatile boolean leader = false; private volatile boolean electable = true; private List<ContinuousService> services; protected synchronized void onElected() { if (!leader) { for (ContinuousService service : services) { service.resume(); } leader = true; } } protected synchronized void onDeposed() { if (leader) { for (ContinuousService service : services) { service.pause(); } leader = false; } } public void setServices(List<ContinuousService> services) { this.services = services; } @ManagedAttribute public boolean isElectable() { return electable; } @ManagedAttribute public boolean isLeader() { return leader; } public class TangosolLeaderElector extends ClusterServiceManager implements Runnable { private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(TangosolLeaderElector.class); private String election; private long electionWaitTime= 5000L; private NamedCache cache; public void start() { log.info("Starting LeaderElector ({})",election); Thread t = new Thread(this, "LeaderElector ("+election+")"); t.setDaemon(true); t.start(); } public void run() { // Give the connection a chance to start itself up try { Thread.sleep(1000); } catch (InterruptedException e) {} boolean wasElectable = !isElectable(); while (true) { if (isElectable()) { if (!wasElectable) { log.info("Leadership requested on election: {}",election); wasElectable = isElectable(); } boolean elected = false; try { // Try and get the lock on the LeaderElectorCache for the current election if (!cache.lock(election, electionWaitTime)) { // We didn't get the lock. cycle round again. // This code to ensure we check the electable flag every now & then continue; } elected = true; log.info("Leadership taken on election: {}",election); onElected(); // Wait here until the services fail in some way. while (true) { try { Thread.sleep(electionWaitTime); } catch (InterruptedException e) {} if (!cache.lock(election, 0)) { log.warn("Cache lock no longer held for election: {}", election); break; } else if (!isElectable()) { log.warn("Node is no longer electable for election: {}", election); break; } // We're fine - loop round and go back to sleep. } } catch (Exception e) { if (log.isErrorEnabled()) { log.error("Leadership election " + election + " failed (try bfmq logs for details)", e); } } finally { if (elected) { cache.unlock(election); log.info("Leadership resigned on election: {}",election); onDeposed(); } // On deposition, do not try and get re-elected for at least the standard wait time. try { Thread.sleep(electionWaitTime); } catch (InterruptedException e) {} } } else { // Not electable - wait a bit and check again. if (wasElectable) { log.info("Leadership NOT requested on election ({}) - node not electable",election); wasElectable = isElectable(); } try { Thread.sleep(electionWaitTime); } catch (InterruptedException e) {} } } } public void setElection(String election) { this.election = election; } @ManagedAttribute public String getElection() { return election; } public void setNamedCache(NamedCache nc) { this.cache = nc; }

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  • Visual Studio 2008 Unit test does not pick up code changes unless I build the entire solution

    - by Orion Edwards
    Here's the scenario: Change my code: Change my unit test for that code With the cursor inside the unit test class/method, invoke VS2008's "Run tests in current context" command The visual studio "Output" window indicates that the code dll and the test dll both successfully build (in that order) The problem is however, that the unit test does not use the latest version of the dll which it has just built. Instead, it uses the previously built dll (which doesn't have the updated code in it), so the test fails. When adding a new method, this results in a MethodNotImplementedException, and when adding a class, it results in a TypeLoadException, both because the unit test thinks the new code is there, and it isn't!. If I'm just updating an existing method, then the test just fails due to incorrect results. I can 'work around' the problem by doing this Change my code: Change my unit test for that code Invoke VS2008's 'Build Solution' command With the cursor inside the unit test class/method, invoke VS2008's "Run tests in current context" command The problem is that doing a full build solution (even though nothing has changed) takes upwards of 30 seconds, as I have approx 50 C# projects, and VS2008 is not smart enough to realize that only 2 of them need to be looked at. Having to wait 30 seconds just to change 1 line of code and re-run a unit test is abysmal. Is there anything I can do to fix this? None of my code is in the GAC or anything funny like that, it's just ordinary old dll's (buiding against .NET 3.5SP1 on a win7/64bit machine) Please help!

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  • How do you tell that your unit tests are correct?

    - by Jacob Adams
    I've only done minor unit testing at various points in my career. Whenever I start diving into it again, it always troubles me how to prove that my tests are correct. How can I tell that there isn't a bug in my unit test? Usually I end up running the app, proving it works, then using the unit test as a sort of regression test. What is the recommended approach and/or what is the approach you take to this problem? Edit: I also realize that you could write small, granular unit tests that would be easy to understand. However, if you assume that small, granular code is flawless and bulletproof, you could just write small, granular programs and not need unit testing. Edit2: For the arguments "unit testing is for making sure your changes don't break anything" and "this will only happen if the test has the exact same flaw as the code", what if the test overfits? It's possible to pass both good and bad code with a bad test. My main question is what good is unit testing since if your tests can be flawed you can't really improve your confidence in your code, can't really prove your refactoring worked, and can't really prove that you met the specification?

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  • "Cannot perform a differential backup for database "myDb", because a current database backup does no

    - by krimerd
    Hi there, I have what seems to be a pretty common problem when trying to take a differential backup. We have a SQL Server 2008 Standard (64bit) and we use Litespeed v 5.0.2.0 to take our backups. We take full backups once a week and a differential on a daily basis. The problem is, every time I try to take a diff backup I get the following error: "VDI open failed due to requested abort. BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally. Cannot perform a differential backup for database "myDb", because a current database backup does not exist. Perform a full database backup by reissuing BACKUP DATABASE, omitting the WITH DIFFERENTIAL option." The problem is that I know 100% I have a full backup because I just double checked. Only once I was able to take a diff backup and that was when I took it immediately after I took a full backup. I have searched around and noticed that this is pretty common (although mostly with SQL 2005) and a solution that a lot of ppl suggest and that I haven't tried yet is to disable the SQL Server VSS Writer service. The problem with this is #1 I think I might need this service since I am using a third party backup software and #2 I am not sure exactly what the service does and don't want to disable it just like that. Has any of you ever experienced this problem and how did you go about fixing it? Thank you,

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  • database replication for new user signup

    - by Jeff Storey
    I have a database that stores the users of my application. When a new user signs up, a record is inserted into the database for that user. I have a replicated version (slave) of this database (using mysql for now). What I'm concerned about is this scenario: step 1: user signs up and user record is inserted into the database step 2: user then tries to login, and the login process queries the database for the user. however, this query hits the slave database, but the user record has not yet been replicated in the slave and it returns an error that the user does not exist. This is a pretty trivial example, but I can see how it can apply to a lot of cases. Is there a strategy for configuring replicated databases to help prevent this situation?

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  • Copy Database Wizard fails on creation of view into another not-yet-copied database

    - by user22037
    Update - I found that doing a manual detach/reattach using MSDN article "How to: Move a Database Using Detach and Attach (Transact-SQL)" got around this issue. I'll just be creating a script to dettach and reattach but do the file copies manually. Any info on how to overcome the problems with the wizard would be helpful in the future. I am in the process of moving around 20 databases from our current server to a new one. When performing the copies however I have found that some databases can not copy if they have views into other databases that have not yet been copied to the target system. The log file generated says "failed with the following error: "Invalid object name" in reference to the database in the view. If I first copy just the database referenced in the view and then in a separate step copy the database over containing the view it is successful. However some other database have views into each other so can't just adjust the order in which the copy occurs. Is there any way to ignore this error and just allow everything to copy?

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  • I cannot connect to database from Drupal

    - by Patrick
    hi, I've uploaded my drupal website (and related database) to my new server. The database info is: host: localhost user: user pass: pass databaseName = database_name I've set the following line in settings.php file: $db_url = 'mysqli://user:password@localhost/database_name'; but what I get is this: If you are the maintainer of this site, please check your database settings in the settings.php file and ensure that your hosting provider's database server is running. For more help, see the handbook, or contact your hosting provider. I guess the database is running, it always run and I can access with phpmyadmin so I think the problem is not there. The database and website files upload have also been succesfull.. so I dunno what to do to fix this issue. It is mysql on IIS Server thanks

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  • Oracle 10g Failover Database - How to fail back?

    - by rrkwells
    I want to know how the failover database concept works after recovery. We have defined our application to connect to a backup database in case the production database fails. If this happens, then all the transactions will be happening on that backup database. Once the production db server is running again, then how do we make sure the changes made in the backup database will be reflected on the production database? We want to make sure that any changes made while failed over are not lost. We are using Oracle 10g.

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  • Event on SQL Server 2008 Disk IO and the new Complex Event Processing (StreamInsight) feature in R2

    - by tonyrogerson
    Allan Mitchell and myself are doing a double act, Allan is becoming one of the leading guys in the UK on StreamInsight and will give an introduction to this new exciting technology; on top of that I'll being talking about SQL Server Disk IO - well, "Disk" might not be relevant anymore because I'll be talking about SSD and IOFusion - basically I'll be talking about the underpinnings - making sure you understand and get it right, how to monitor etc... If you've any specific problems or questions just ping me an email [email protected]. To register for the event see: http://sqlserverfaq.com/events/217/SQL-Server-and-Disk-IO-File-GroupsFiles-SSDs-FusionIO-InRAM-DBs-Fragmentation-Tony-Rogerson-Complex-Event-Processing-Allan-Mitchell.aspx 18:15 SQL Server and Disk IOTony Rogerson, SQL Server MVPTony's Blog; Tony on TwitterIn this session Tony will talk about RAID levels, how SQL server writes to and reads from disk, the effect SSD has and will talk about other options for throughput enhancement like Fusion IO. He will look at the effect fragmentation has and how to minimise the impact, he will look at the File structure of a database and talk about what benefits multiple files and file groups bring. We will also touch on Database Mirroring and the effect that has on throughput, how to get a feeling for the throughput you should expect.19:15 Break19:45 Complex Event Processing (CEP)Allan Mitchell, SQL Server MVPhttp://sqlis.com/sqlisStreamInsight is Microsoft’s first foray into the world of Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Event Stream Processing (ESP).  In this session I want to show an introduction to this technology.  I will show how and why it is useful.  I will get us used to some new terminology but best of all I will show just how easy it is to start building your first CEP/ESP application.

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  • 10gR2 Transportable Tablespaces Certified for EBS 11i

    - by Steven Chan
    Database migration across platforms of different "endian" (byte ordering) formats using the Cross Platform Transportable Tablespaces (XTTS) process is now certified for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (11.5.10.2) with Oracle Database 10g Release 2.  This process is sometimes also referred to as transportable tablespaces (TTS).What is the Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespace Feature?The Cross-Platform Transportable Tablespace feature allows users to move a user tablespace across Oracle databases. It's an efficient way to move bulk data between databases. If the source platform and the target platform are of different endianness, then an additional conversion step must be done on either the source or target platform to convert the tablespace being transported to the target format. If they are of the same endianness, then no conversion is necessary and tablespaces can be transported as if they were on the same platform.Moving data using transportable tablespaces can be much faster than performing either an export/import or unload/load of the same data. This is because transporting a tablespace only requires the copying of datafiles from source to the destination and then integrating the tablespace structural information. You can also use transportable tablespaces to move both table and index data, thereby avoiding the index rebuilds you would have to perform when importing or loading table data.

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  • How Mature is Your Database Change Management Process?

    - by Ben Rees
    .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database Delivery Patterns & Practices Further Reading Organization and team processes How do you get your database schema changes live, on to your production system? As your team of developers and DBAs are working on the changes to the database to support your business-critical applications, how do these updates wend their way through from dev environments, possibly to QA, hopefully through pre-production and eventually to production in a controlled, reliable and repeatable way? In this article, I describe a model we use to try and understand the different stages that customers go through as their database change management processes mature, from the very basic and manual, through to advanced continuous delivery practices. I also provide a simple chart that will help you determine “How mature is our database change management process?” This process of managing changes to the database – which all of us who have worked in application/database development have had to deal with in one form or another – is sometimes known as Database Change Management (even if we’ve never used the term ourselves). And it’s a difficult process, often painfully so. Some developers take the approach of “I’ve no idea how my changes get live – I just write the stored procedures and add columns to the tables. It’s someone else’s problem to get this stuff live. I think we’ve got a DBA somewhere who deals with it – I don’t know, I’ve never met him/her”. I know I used to work that way. I worked that way because I assumed that making the updates to production was a trivial task – how hard can it be? Pause the application for half an hour in the middle of the night, copy over the changes to the app and the database, and switch it back on again? Voila! But somehow it never seemed that easy. And it certainly was never that easy for database changes. Why? Because you can’t just overwrite the old database with the new version. Databases have a state – more specifically 4Tb of critical data built up over the last 12 years of running your business, and if your quick hotfix happened to accidentally delete that 4Tb of data, then you’re “Looking for a new role” pretty quickly after the failed release. There are a lot of other reasons why a managed database change management process is important for organisations, besides job security, not least: Frequency of releases. Many business managers are feeling the pressure to get functionality out to their users sooner, quicker and more reliably. The new book (which I highly recommend) Lean Enterprise by Jez Humble, Barry O’Reilly and Joanne Molesky provides a great discussion on how many enterprises are having to move towards a leaner, more frequent release cycle to maintain their competitive advantage. It’s no longer acceptable to release once per year, leaving your customers waiting all year for changes they desperately need (and expect) Auditing and compliance. SOX, HIPAA and other compliance frameworks have demanded that companies implement proper processes for managing changes to their databases, whether managing schema changes, making sure that the data itself is being looked after correctly or other mechanisms that provide an audit trail of changes. We’ve found, at Red Gate that we have a very wide range of customers using every possible form of database change management imaginable. Everything from “Nothing – I just fix the schema on production from my laptop when things go wrong, and write it down in my notebook” to “A full Continuous Delivery process – any change made by a dev gets checked in and recorded, fully tested (including performance tests) before a (tested) release is made available to our Release Management system, ready for live deployment!”. And everything in between of course. Because of the vast number of customers using so many different approaches we found ourselves struggling to keep on top of what everyone was doing – struggling to identify patterns in customers’ behavior. This is useful for us, because we want to try and fit the products we have to different needs – different products are relevant to different customers and we waste everyone’s time (most notably, our customers’) if we’re suggesting products that aren’t appropriate for them. If someone visited a sports store, looking to embark on a new fitness program, and the store assistant suggested the latest $10,000 multi-gym, complete with multiple weights mechanisms, dumb-bells, pull-up bars and so on, then he’s likely to lose that customer. All he needed was a pair of running shoes! To solve this issue – in an attempt to simplify how we understand our customers and our offerings – we built a model. This is a an attempt at trying to classify our customers in to some sort of model or “Customer Maturity Framework” as we rather grandly term it, which somehow simplifies our understanding of what our customers are doing. The great statistician, George Box (amongst other things, the “Box” in the Box-Jenkins time series model) gave us the famous quote: “Essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful” We’ve taken this quote to heart – we know it’s a gross over-simplification of the real world of how users work with complex legacy and new database developments. Almost nobody precisely fits in to one of our categories. But we hope it’s useful and interesting. There are actually a number of similar models that exist for more general application delivery. We’ve found these from ThoughtWorks/Forrester, from InfoQ and others, and initially we tried just taking these models and replacing the word “application” for “database”. However, we hit a problem. From talking to our customers we know that users are far less further down the road of mature database change management than they are for application development. As a simple example, no application developer, who wants to keep his/her job would develop an application for an organisation without source controlling that code. Sure, he/she might not be using an advanced Gitflow branching methodology but they’ll certainly be making sure their code gets managed in a repo somewhere with all the benefits of history, auditing and so on. But this certainly isn’t the case (yet) for the database – a very large segment of the people we speak to have no source control set up for their databases whatsoever, even at the most basic level (for example, keeping change scripts in a source control system somewhere). By the way, if this is you, Red Gate has a great whitepaper here, on the barriers people face getting a source control process implemented at their organisations. This difference in maturity is the same as you move in to areas such as continuous integration (common amongst app developers, relatively rare for database developers) and automated release management (growing amongst app developers, very rare for the database). So, when we created the model we started from scratch and biased the levels of maturity towards what we actually see amongst our customers. But, what are these stages? And what level are you? The table below describes our definitions for four levels of maturity – Baseline, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. As I say, this is a model – you won’t fit any of these categories perfectly, but hopefully one will ring true more than others. We’ve also created a PDF with a flow chart to help you find which of these groups most closely matches your team:  Download the Database Delivery Maturity Framework PDF here   Level D1 – Baseline Work directly on live databases Sometimes work directly in production Generate manual scripts for releases. Sometimes use a product like SQL Compare or similar to do this Any tests that we might have are run manually Level D2 – Beginner Have some ad-hoc DB version control such as manually adding upgrade scripts to a version control system Attempt is made to keep production in sync with development environments There is some documentation and planning of manual deployments Some basic automated DB testing in process Level D3 – Intermediate The database is fully version-controlled with a product like Red Gate SQL Source Control or SSDT Database environments are managed Production environment schema is reproducible from the source control system There are some automated tests Have looked at using migration scripts for difficult database refactoring cases Level D4 – Advanced Using continuous integration for database changes Build, testing and deployment of DB changes carried out through a proper database release process Fully automated tests Production system is monitored for fast feedback to developers   Does this model reflect your team at all? Where are you on this journey? We’d be very interested in knowing how you get on. We’re doing a lot of work at the moment, at Red Gate, trying to help people progress through these stages. For example, if you’re currently not source controlling your database, then this is a natural next step. If you are already source controlling your database, what about the next stage – continuous integration and automated release management? To help understand these issues, there’s a summary of the Red Gate Database Delivery learning program on our site, alongside a Patterns and Practices library here on Simple-Talk and a Training Academy section on our documentation site to help you get up and running with the tools you need to progress. All feedback is welcome and it would be great to hear where you find yourself on this journey! This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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