1. Yaniv Yehuda
The Challenges and Pitfalls of
Database Deployment Automation

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Before We Begin

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Presenter
Yaniv Yehuda
• CTO, Co-Founder at DBmaestro

4. About DBmaestro
• Founded in 2008, product launched in 2010
• Founded by Yariv Tabac and Yaniv Yehuda
• Headquartered in Israel, Global Operations

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• Doing better with less
• Reacting quickly to market needs
• Getting ahead of competition
• Just can’t wait 6 months for that next
release…
• Agile Development
• Process Automation
• DevOps
Agile world…

6. Dealing with Risk
 Smaller and more focused changes are easier to manage (Agile…)
 Automation of repeating tasks lowers risk of (human) error
 Development and Operations should work in synergy (DevOps)

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Continuous Integration
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Deployment
Automation is the Name of the Game…

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• Principles and practices
• Focus on streamlining development
• Developers integrate code into shared repository
• Each check-in is verified
• Automated builds
• Automated tests
• High visibility
• Easier & quicker to prevent and find problems,
less back tracks => short integrations
What is Continuous Integration?

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• Next step after continuous integration
• Becoming lean, and even more Agile
• Make sure each change is releasable
• Develop-> build-> test-> move to staging-> acceptance test
• Build a process to release with a push of a button
• Deploy to production-> test production
• Actual deployment to production is manually
actuated
=> Ensure risk mitigation and high efficiency
And Continuous Delivery?

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• Rapid changes
• Reacting quickly to market needs
• Getting ahead of competition
• Fewer changes backed out
• Better collaboration
• Fewer defects
• Ultimately better service
• Happy customers
• Profitability
Why Continuous Delivery?

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• Team and process
• Version everything
• Automate your tests
• Fix it, properly (no out of process changes!)
• Automate your deployments
• Create the deployment pipeline
Focus points

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But…

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• The database holds your essential information
• Any changes can impact the entire system
• Need to be synchronized with other changes
• Often overlooked
Database is a Key Component

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• There is more to a database than SQL scripts
• Schema structure
• Code
• Content and meta-content
• Internal dependencies
• …
• Ensure that changes are not made without
authorization
• Ensure no out-of-process changes
Reaching Inside the Database

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• Old adage but true
• The database is often neglected and therefore can
become the weakest link
• Essential from a compliance and business point of
view
• Should be the strongest link
The Weakest Link In a Chain

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• Silos exist…
• Don’t always communicate effectively
• Need to share knowledge
• Need to follow same procedures & best
practices
Developers and DBAs

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Real-life tales

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Real-life tales…
“it was difficult to track who made a change to a database
object and what change they made.”
(working-around file based version control)
“it took hours to get releases working. some changes were
not documented and left out. we actually preferred crashes
in integration. It is much worse when something works, but
works wrong. in production…”
(manual and error prone releases)

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Real-life tales…
“We recently had a disaster - the script in the version
control was not updated and when executed in production,
ran the wrong revision. That cost tens of thousands of $”
(an out-of-process update to QA that was not properly tracked)
“We had multiple releases to production every day. That is
one release a week with multiple follow up fixes, and yet
more fixes”
(code overrides, partial versions, wrong versions – all pushed to production)

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Real-life tales…
“we had an incident where a trigger was not correctly
implemented during a code release. a trigger from a
previous build was used instead which was only detected
on Tuesday morning on the first business day after our code
release. this was a customer-facing application and made
our team look, and feel, bad about the release.
we realized that we needed to bring more discipline and
rigor to our database changes.”
(manual process are hard to repeat over and over without errors)

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Challenges…
Un-coordinated Process
Silos in development
Deployment
delays…
Out-of-Process Changes
Errors in production
Lack of confidence in automation
Code overrides
Different methodologies
Lack of history
Missing changes
wrong versions

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• Root Causes:
• Manual script based version control process
• Deployment tools unaware of version control
• No change process red-flags…

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Two isolated Processes
Version Control Process
(file based)
Development Process
Check-Out
Script
Modify Script
Get updated
Script from DB
Check-In
Script
Compile
Script
in DB
Debug Script
in DB
?
?
?
?
A
A’

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Scripts
Pit falls

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Scripts & Version Control
Challenges…
• Code-overrides
• Working on the wrong revisions
• Scripts do not always find their way to the version control solution
• Out of process updates go unnoticed
• Hard to locate outdated update scripts
Playing safe? what we really need:
• The actual code of the object
• The upgrade script
• A roll-back script

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Testing Scripts
Single object based scripts
• Hard to test in their entirely (holistically)
• Hard to test due to colliding dependencies
• Need to run in a specific order…
Large multi object based script
• Represents the entire update - can deal with dependencies
• Much harder to deal with project scope changes
• Hard to mange – a big list of commands

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X
1.11.1.11.11.21.31.41.51.61.7
Scripts… Build Once Deploy Many
Int QA Stage Prod
Database Deploy Script
Environment
Re-Base (due to defects)
Dev
Dev
Dev
Model
1.1 1.2
1.2 1.3
1.3 1.4
1.4 1.5
1.5 1.6
1.6 1.7
1.11.11.41.7
1.1 1.2
1.2 1.3
1.3 1.4
1.4 1.5
1.5 1.6
1.6 1.7
1.1 1.2
1.2 1.3
1.3 1.4
1.4 1.5
1.5 1.6
1.6 1.7
Out of Process
Change
X
X
X
X
X
? 1.1.1
X

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Scripts are static…
Scripts, unless super sophisticated:
• Unaware of changes made in the target environment
• Time passed from their coding to the time they are run
• Potentially overriding production hot-fixes or work done in parallel by
another team
Content changes are very hard to manage
• Metadata & lookup content does not practically fit into the VC
• In most cases they are simply not managed

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Dealing with challenges…
Coordinated ProcessTraceability
Start in the Beginning
No Out-of-Process Changes
Impact Analysis
Automation
Task Based Development
Well Defined Processes

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Version Control - One Enforced Process

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Dealing with challenges…
Integrated Version Control process
• Leverage proven version control best practices
• Forcing check in & out for changes
• Labels
• etc..
• No code-overrides
• Always working with the correct revision
• All changes are documented
• Always know who did what, when, why and from where
• No out-of-process changes
• Supporting structure, code and content
No time spent on manual coding of the change scripts

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Bonus Points
Task based development…
• Correlate each database change with a change request
• Task ID
• Work Item
• Trouble Ticket
• CR
• etc…
…enables task based deployments
• Partial deployments (a feature, a collection of bugs, etc…)
• Scope changes easily synced between code and database

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Change Policy Enforcement

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Change Policy Enforcement

35. For deployment automation we need:
Automatic, repeatable & safe
Using tools make sense …

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1.11.21.31.41.51.61.7
Build & Deploy On Demand
*
Int QA Stage Prod
Database Deploy Script
Environment* Execute the same script
being executed at the
Stage environment
Re-Base (due to defects)
Dev
Dev
Dev
Model
1.1 1.2
1.2 1.3
1.3 1.4
1.4 1.5
1.5 1.6
1.6 1.7
1.1 1.4
1.4 1.7
1.1.1 1.7
1.1 1.1 1.11.41.7
File Based
Version Control
Out of Process
Change
1.1.11.7 1.1.11.7

37. Real World Deployment Automation
Test cases using compare & sync tools:
An index exists in source (QA) but not in target (Production)
What should we do? Add the index or not?

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Compare & Sync tools
Safe to automate?
Sure…

39. Deployment Automation
An index exists in Target (Production) but not in source (QA)
What should we do? Drop the index or not?

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Compare & Sync tools
Safe to automate?
No. Requires manual inspection…

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Safe?
Simple, right?
NO! we are going to BREAK production without even
knowing…

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Why break production???
A compare & sync tool:
• Is unaware of any changes that occurred before the time it ran
• Has no knowledge of changes that took place at the target environment
• Does not leverage version control for more information
• Unable to deal with conflicts & merges between different teams
• Requires manual inspection
• Requires detailed knowledge regarding each change as part of the
process
So… no automation… as automating problems into production
is a major risk!!!

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We need to leverage version control
into deployment decisions…

44. Safety Net For Deployment Automation
Source vs.
Target
Action
= No Action
≠
?
Source vs.
Baseline
Target vs.
Baseline
Action
= = No Action
≠ = Deploy Changes
= ≠ Protect Target
≠ ≠ Merge Changes
You do not have all
of the information
With Baselines and 3 way
analysis the unknown is
now known
Simple Compare & Sync Baseline aware Analysis

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Protecting Target Environment
Development Baseline
Previous Label /
Production Golden Copy
Production
No index in baseline =>
we should protect the NEW index on production!!!
(Protect Target)

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Protecting Target Environment
Development Baseline
Previous Label /
Production Golden Copy
Production
BUT… If we had the index in the baseline =>
we should take it down from production…
(Deploy Change)

47. Deployment Automation
And Merge???

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Conflict Resolving – Database Code

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Conflict Resolving – Meta Data/Content

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Impact Analysis

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Safety Net For Deployment Automation
Database Safe Deployment Automation:
• Leverages version control (baselines & previous revisions)
• Has a flexible scope (deploy multi schema to single task or work item)
• Can be run as a batch process (repeatable & consistent)
• Integrates to ALM (labels, CRs, Continuous Integration & Delivery)
• Deals with conflicts & merges to match code agility
Can raise red flags to stop the line…
if requires human intervention

52. Summary - What is DBmaestro TeamWork?
• Database Enforced Change Management solution
+ Database version control
+ Enforce best practices
+ Plugs into the ALM (change request, tickets & work items)
+ Database merge & change impact analysis
+ Know who can do what, where, when & why
• DevOps Solution for databases
+ Baseline aware deployment automation, rollback &
recovery
+ Reduce database deployment issues
+ Plugs into release management & Continuous Delivery

53. Summary - How?
• Database version control
• Enforced Check Out/In
• Labels
• Rollback/Undo
• Audit trail reports
• Database impact analysis
• Utilizes version control repository information
• 3-way analysis
• Database deployment automation
• API for automation
• Baselines
• Conflict resolution
• Customized business logic
• Continuous EVERYTHING!

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Q & A