On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 8:06 PM, Darren Shepherd <dar...@godaddy.com> wrote: > Has there been any talk about not maintaining a monolithic > create_schema.sql and doing a more DB migrate style? From a > supportability perspective its way easier if your SQL is just always > deltas from the last. For example, you ship version 1 and create > schema1.sql. Version 2 you add some stuff so you create a schema2.sql > that adds what you need to the database (just delta). So if somebody > installs from scratch they run schema1.sql and schema2.sql. If you > already have version 1, you just run schema2.sql. > > This is an extremely common approach and cuts down the need to test the > DB from scratch and upgrade. > > Darren
+1 - I'm a huge fan of this, based on lots of time using the Django / Python world's South framework [1]. That approach supports schema and data migrations, rolling forwards and backwards. It might not be possible to easily get to that level of sophistication, but it makes operation of an environment much easier. However, there does come a time when the total number of migrations gets out of hand. I'm not sure we can get away without a "create db" script that essentially does 80% of the schema build... -chip [1] - http://south.aeracode.org/
