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HA solution for regular new/updated SQL object roll outs

  • May 4, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    #988423

    OK Ta

    www.sql-library.com[/url]

  • May 5, 2009 at 3:29 am

    #988624

    It sounds like what you're really after is more a Lifecycle than a HA solution.

    HA is a non-functional requirement for a particular environment. You're wanting a pre-production / acceptance environment to test prior to rolling out changes into production. This is good. But you don't do it in a production environment.

    Any environment that is hosting production classified data should only ever host production. This would include Production and Training. Volume Testing (large sample production data in production system configuration [ie, same hardware]) may live in a production domain, but is "physically" separate to Production.

    Your acceptance environments - UAT (User Acceptance Test), PA (Production Acceptance), ST (System Test), IT (Integration Test) - are where you would test the schema changes you are referring to.

    Developers develop and test in a development environment - DV (Development).

    All modifications should be in a package - no manual work.

    Developers do their thing and get whatever they are working on to the point that they think it's ready to progress up the lifecycle chain. Testers do their thing and when they think it's ready to publish to Production they give it to a Deployment / Release team that then does the actual Production release with a rollback strategy. Scripted, Packaged and Transaction wrapped.

    Hope this helps

    --
    Andrew Hatfield

  • May 5, 2009 at 10:14 am

    #989005

    I agree completely with everything Andrew said. This is the best practice and should be standard for any well organized and properly staffed place.

    My blog: SQL Soldier[/url]
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  • May 5, 2009 at 10:36 am

    #989029

    You may want to take a look at SQL Packager


    * Noel

  • May 5, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    #989145

    It sounds like you need a fully functional "QA" environment. You should be able to take a backup of the database restore it to the "QA" environment, deploy the same as you would in production and run prod like transactions to validate that the changes didn't break anything.

    What transaction are you afraid you'll miss? Can't you reproduce the same transaction?

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