DB Ghost Professional Edition™


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Overview

The Professional Edition gives you all the tools to implement the full DB Ghost Process enabling you to script out your databases into individual DROP/CREATE scripts, place those scripts under source control, modify them there and then build and deploy from those scripts.

Script databases into source control

Once a database has been successfully scripted and placed under source control it can then be regarded as the "source database". Therefore, instead of developers keeping a database instance up to date with their changes they simply update the scripts in source control to reflect the desired schema.

Synchronize target databases to the source

Once you are ready to deploy those changes you simply baseline the entire set of source scripts using your source control system ("label" or "baselining" functionality is found in most source control systems) and then extract those scripts to disk and use the Change Manager to build a new database (to verify all dependencies are ok and that no syntax errors exist) and then compare and synchronize your target database.

To cater for any situations that can't be automatically handled the Change Manager allows "custom scripts" to be included at various points in the overall process enabling virtually any build or synchronization situation to be handled.

DB Ghost Professional Edition consists of:

  • The Database Change Manager application (contains the build, schema and data compare functionality all-in-one)
  • The Data and Schema Scripter application

Features

  • Scripts all object types into individual DROP/CREATE scripts
  • Scripts data into boilerplate INSERT scripts
  • Command line or API execution for total process automation in daily/continuous builds etc. (requires Automation Toolkit™)
  • Can add scripts to source control (VSS only)
  • Builds databases from individual object scripts
  • Highlights syntax, dependency and data errors
  • Creates a single script for the database build that can be reused
  • Can synchronize two databases making them match precisely
  • Can synchronize an existing database to a set of base schema creation scripts in your Source Management System. This means that your Source Management System itself provides a complete audit trail
  • Can insert custom scripts at the end of the build, before and after the synch process
  • Creates a script of the differences between two databases or base schema scripts and a target database
  • Handles all types of database object and all complex interactions
  • Intuitive, straightforward wizard based interface
  • SessionSave facility lets you save your wizard answers for later reuse

Screenshots

For the Data and Schema Scripter screenshots please see its product page. The following set of screenshots show the optimal use of the Change Manager to build, compare and synchronize a database. The first step is to choose option 3 on the task list: Build a database and apply change to a target database:

The database that is to be synchronized to the set of source scripts (the target database) is chosen first:

Next, the name of the database to be built as the source database is entered:

This screen allows you to limit the Change Manager to only objects that are new, different or redundant. It also allows further refinement in terms of checking ordnal position, collations and extended properties. Note also that DB Ghost can report on duplicated indexes which are a performance drain, especially on large databases:

The location of the scripts to be used to build the source database:

The execution options for the Change Manager. you can save the selections file, produce a detailed report of the objects that are modified and also capture the build script and "difference" script:

Detailed information is given during the build, compare and synchronization process:

After a few minutes the run is completed - the target database "AdventureWorks" is now at the same schema level as the set of DROP/CREATE scripts in the source control system.