how to minimize application downtime when updating database and application ORM
- by yamspog
We currently run an ecommerce solution for a leisure and travel company. Everytime we have a release, we must bring the ecommerce site down as we update database schema and the data access code. We are using a custom built ORM where each data entity is responsible for their own CRUD operations. This is accomplished by dynamically generating the SQL based on attributes in the data entity.
For example, the data entity for an address would be...
[tableName="address"]
public class address : dataEntity
{
[column="address1"]
public string address1;
[column="city"]
public string city;
}
So, if we add a new column to the database, we must update the schema of the database and also update the data entity.
As you can expect, the business people are not too happy about this outage as it puts a crimp in their cash-flow. The operations people are not happy as they have to deal with a high-pressure time when database and applications are upgraded. The programmers are upset as they are constantly getting in trouble for the legacy system that they inherited.
Do any of you smart people out there have some suggestions?
