Scenario:
Hosted Service Providers (xSP) and Internet Service Providers (ISP) providing Web/Applications hosting services based on SQL Server databases can benefit largely by offering Database Change Management to their customers using SwisSQL DBChangeManager.
Service Providers allocate separate account(s) in the SQL Server database running in their network for their customers to host any web service/application. Any modification to be done to the production database schema would be done by the customer either by themselves or in coordination with the provider. These updates, would typically involve comparing the new schema against the existing schema (in the production database), generating migration scripts and executing the same to propagate the new changes into the hosted production database.
This involves tedious and error-prone manual work due to lack of hosted sql server database change management tool which is remotely accessible being offered by the service providers . Additionally it also mandates the customer to maintain the various migration scripts/updated schema to have an audit trail of the schema changes done over a period of time
Typical Approach:
- Service Providers provide dedicated database accounts to their customers who approach them for web/application hosting purposes.
- Based on their evolving business requirements, customers generate/modify the schema in the production database.
- Customers or Service Providers (on behalf of the customer) has to compare the new schema against the existing schema, generate migration scripts and execute the same to propagate the new changes into the hosted production database.
- Step 3, involves manual effort and is risk-prone with lack of tools for SQL Server database change management tool offered by the Service Providers to its customers.
- Customers have to use their own versioning system to maintain the migration scripts/schema for audit trail purposes.
Key Limitations:
- Manual and time consuming effort required to upgrade the database schema.
- Error-prone, as upgrade scripts are coded manually
- Migration scripts have to be maintained (versioned) separately by the customers for audit purposes.
- Lack of Automated tool for comparison and synchronization, which could be a great productivity enabler to the customers of Service Providers.
DBChangeManager Solution:
A typical Service Provider setup with the usage of SwisSQL DBChangeManager is described in the figure below :
xSPs/ISPs could install SwisSQL DBChangeManager in their hosted environment and provide access to the same to their customers. As DBChangeManager is web based and also provides multi-user logins, customers could access DBChangeManager with appropriate login over the Web (HTTP) and handle their SQL Server database change management tasks.
Whenever changes are to be done to the hosted SQL Server database schema, customers can access DBChangeManager and compare the changed SQL scripts with the hosted production database. On reviewing the changes they could automatically generate the synchronization scripts with DBChangeManager and execute the same to update the latest changes into the production database. All the modifications (synchronizations) done to the production database would be automatically logged by DBChangeManager for audit (both by the customer as well as Service Providers) at later point of time.
Offering DBChangeManager as an add-on service, Service providers could provide an essential value added service to it customers. Also automating the essential tasks in database change management, would be a great productivity enabler to the customers.
Solution Benefits:
- Automated comparison and upgrade of schema done by customers.
- Efficient and error-free update guaranteed by DBChangeManager for any database setup.
- Ensures complete rollback of changes on failures during synchronization/upgrade. Guarantees integrity of the database at any point in time.
- No additional overhead of maintaining the migration scripts required with DBChangeManager.
- Accessible from anywhere through the Web using just a browser
- Great value added service offering by the Service Providers to its customers.
- Offer an effective Hosted Database Change Management value-added service for SQL Server
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