Ringing the Changes for Change Management

Ringing the Changes for Change
Management
Philip Rathle and Scott Walz

Originally published in ISUG Technical Journal, November/December 2007
www.isug.com

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Ringing the changes for
change management
By Philip Rathle and Scott Walz

As modern database change s mature and pervasive as Sybase

management techniques for A ASE has become, nowhere does
there appear to have emerged a uni-
versally-accepted system or standard that
DBA’s sit at the center of a

the Sybase DBA become more addresses the problem of database change complex dance that touches
management in an holistic fashion. DBA’s
sophisticated, there is an inherent sit at the center of a complex dance that many participants: data modelers,
touches many participants: data modelers,
need for practitioners to be aware database developers, architects, business database developers, architects,
analysts, software developers and more.
of the increasingly powerful tools At any given time, each database is business analysts, software
physically instantiated across a number of
available to them. Philip Rathle different environments, each of which may developers and more.
contain any one of several versions of the
and Scott Walz of Embarcadero same database. Furthermore, the design
of a particular database is typically stored
rifle through their DBA toolkit and across a variety of locations and a multi- The good news is that there is some new
plicity of tools, which may include a data hope for this old issue. The emergence of
sharpen up a few blades for us. modeling tool, a SQL development tool, a powerful new breed of database change
a database administration tool, a database management tools has breathed some new
change management tool and so on. life into this space and will begin yielding
some relief. While tools can never of
Shepherding the stream themselves be silver bullets for complicat-
Accurately shepherding the stream of ed process problems, their adoption is
functional and technology change across an important element not just in the
Philip Rathle brings over ten years of all of these physical environments and solution, but in instigating change.
experience with mission critical systems design layer components can be a tremen- Today’s enterprises are so large and
in the areas of customer data manage- dous challenge. Oftentimes, the database complex that one cannot hope to climb
ment, data warehousing, marketing and change process has been (rightly or out of today’s convoluted database change
campaign management and online oper- wrongly) patterned after the software management ruts without new and power-
ational data management to his role as change management process. This invari- ful functionality aimed specifically at this
Principal Consultant at Embarcadero. ably leaves gaps, which DBA’s usually fill problem. Database change management
with manual and ad hoc workarounds. tools, and the techniques they enable, play
Scott Walz is a Senior Product Manager The job gets done, however the process an important role not merely in coordinat-
at Embarcadero Technologies, he over- for achieving it is generally not optimal ing the overall change management
sees the direction of the company's data- for the specifics of database applications. process, but in unwinding and assessing
base development products as well as Moreover, it often comes at a cost of a the current state of affairs so that it can
database research and development for gradually diverging design layer, as this make the leap forward.
the engineering departments. He can be layer lies for the most part outside of the Some of the key difficulties in manag-
reached at scott.walz@embarcadero.com DBA’s purview. ing database change are:

28 ISUG TECHNICAL JOURNAL

R I N G I N G T H E C H A N G E S F O R C H A N G E M A N A G E M E N T

◆ the need to preserve data when making a structural change This is a testament to the real lack of visibility which this
◆ the need to maintain separate storage settings for objects important issue suffers.
across environments–even when the structures are Part of the problem is that very few organizations look at

D ATA M A N A G E M E N T
themselves identical “Database Change Management” as a single unified process.
◆ security differences between environments, reflected in It is assumed that database change management is a natural
users, roles and object permissions outcome, at the juncture of database management, software
◆ shared responsibility for certain types of objects, for configuration management, and data modeling. The first step
example stored procedures, which are code artifacts and in developing a robust database change management solution
at the same time database artifacts and may be “owned” is to recognize it as a standalone process or discipline, with its
either by the DBA or the database developer, depending own peculiarities that make it quite different from software
on the organization and on the target environment change management.
◆ the need to keep physical and logical models in sync with One must then ask the question, “What is database
the database (which can itself have cascading impacts) change management?” We believe that the question should
◆ the need to manage and (increasingly) report on differ- consider not just structures, but also settings and data. These
ences between database settings over time within a are the three primary factors that come together to make a
database clean database build and which determine not merely the
◆ the need to manage and maintain different sets of structural and data accuracy, but also the performance and
database settings across different database environments security characteristics of a database.
◆ the need to validate the synchronicity of data in a
replicated environment by comparing data between
primary and replicated tables
◆ the need to manage reference data as one of the compo-
nents necessary for a database build, complicated by the
fact that reference data can be represented as table data or
as check constraints, and is often shared across loosely-
related databases
◆ the need to support multiple versions of a database
concurrently, to support parallel branches of development Figure 1
◆ the need to accommodate multiple paths by which change
may be effected. For example, emergency changes in the Database design layer
middle of the night that will nearly always be made by It is important that the business case for modernizing one’s
executing a DDL directly against the database and not strategy for Database Change Management, as well as the
through a change management framework (let alone a strategy itself, include the database design layer in addition
data modeling tool!) Yet these changes ultimately need to the physical implementation. For the design layer (in the
to be reflected in all of these places. form of a data model, or stored procedure constructs) is not
merely a precursor to a physical database implementation,
Documentation duties but it is also used for software design, impact analysis, and
If it weren’t enough to get the right structure of data into publishing of metadata to a variety of applications (include
the right place with as little downtime as possible, what is ETL, SOA, OLAP, etc.) Therefore it is crucial that the scope
becoming equally crucial for DBA’s is documenting what of the overall database change management include the
happened, when, and by whom. database design and not just the database. The business case
These challenges are well understood by database to improve the status quo rests on several propositions.
professionals, who deal with them on a day-to-day basis. The first is efficiency: to diminish the high level of
However they tend not to be fully appreciated by those who manual effort associated with managing database change.
are not so closely associated with the technology. Solutions The next is accuracy: being able to state with confidence
to these problems tend to diverge widely from organization what objects, settings and data are in what environment at
to organization and to rely heavily on manual processes. any given time and how a change to one impacts the others.

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2007 29


Being able to compare between a collection and a live
database is an important requirement, which builds upon the
The first core requirement of a database change “collection” concept, as is the ability to compare between
collections (and also between live databases). In a Sybase
management solution is the ability to capture the replication environment, the ability to compare the multiple
databases is the cornerstone to ensuring database integrity.
objects and associated properties of a database Comparison operations should be flexible however, in order
to pinpoint problems, and ensure efficiency. It should be
into “collections”, each with its corresponding possible to narrow the scope of a particular comparison
operation horizontally – by selecting what objects are
intersection in space and time. included in the comparison – and vertically – by selecting
what object characteristics are being subject to comparison.

Finally there is audit trail: being able to say what a database Foundational steps
looked like yesterday, the day before, or a month ago. All Identifying differences and generating reports is another foun-
three will result in direct and indirect cost savings through dational step. This can to a certain degree be accomplished
improved efficiency and accuracy. The last two however can with software change management tools, where archived
also be justified by regulatory compliance. DDL files are “diffed” against one another. The database
Now that we have defined the problem space, we can change management tool takes this two steps further however:
begin to look at some of the characteristics of the solution. first it can reverse engineer what is currently inside of live
The easiest starting point (easy because it tends not to differ database, versus merely comparing between archived DDL
so much across organizations… it is the processes themselves files. However it also offers the ability to generate an alter
which are very organization dependent) is to discuss what script to implement the change, saving a great deal of manual
possibilities exist out of the box for supporting your database effort when implementing change.
change management program. This should equip you with the Modern database change management tools should be
tools you need to begin revisiting and improving your processes. able to generate reliable, syntactically-accurate and properly-
The first core requirement of a database change manage- ordered SQL to bring the desired components in line with
ment solution is the ability to capture the objects and associat- the comparison target. It should also be able to preserve any
ed properties of a database into “collections”, each with its existing data and structures, regardless of whether a table
corresponding intersection in space and time. Again, this must be dropped and recreated and preserve dependent
should include not merely schema objects, but also server and objects, referential integrity, grants, etc., and recompile
database specific configuration settings. In the screen capture any dependent objects.
below can be seen a sample collection, which for the sake of
example includes just tables and indexes on a Sybase 15 server:

Figure 2 Figure 3

30 ISUG TECHNICAL JOURNAL


Figure 3 is an example where a column, EMAIL_ Below is an example of a data compare, of two databases
ADDRESS, has been added to the same Sybase 15 table as residing on different servers. Here, the production database
above, with the archive DDL to the left, the modified table (12.5.4) is running in parallel alongside a cut-over database

D ATA M A N A G E M E N T
to the right and an alter script below. (Sybase 15), until the system is ready to be cut completely
Database settings should be dealt with in a similar fashion, over to Sybase 15. The scope of the compare is a single table.
however with settings, it can be useful to have a specialized The results show that five of the rows did not match:
type of archive (called a “standard”) that serves as a baseline
or template against which various classifications of systems
should be measured.
Below is an example of a comparison between a standard
settings template for a development database, and the actual
settings for one of the development databases, with differ-
ences highlighted: Figure 5

Drilling down, one can see which specific rows did not match,
and bring them into sync by selecting the rows of data to be
carried over, at which point update, insert, and/or delete
statements will be generated, as appropriate:

Figure 4
Figure 6
If the management of structural change within a database is
likened to maintaining a building’s physical structure, the The technologies described above, available in today’s state-
management of data change is that which ensure that all of of-the-art database change management tools, elevate the
the fixtures are in the right place so as to meet the needs of game significantly from common homegrown approaches,
the occupants. Data change management is the process by such as managing DDL within directory trees, using software
which one may compare and verify data: within the same source control to manage database structures, or considering
database, between databases, or even across different the database or backup to be the “master copy”.
database versions or platforms. Equipping oneself with a robust set of tools is an impor-
tant step in developing a modern and effective database
Incomparable data compares change management solution. Also of great importance is an
In organizations where reference data is used across databases, unambiguous change process, which considers the various
data compares can prove invaluable. Though the structure of origination points of change, changes in responsibility for
the tax_rate table, for example, may be identical, a difference various object types across the project/database lifecycle,
in data could lead to serious problems. In replication shops, standards around tool usage and considers the design layer in
the ability to compare sub-sets of the entire dataset provides addition to the physical implementation. With a clear vision,
a means to validate the replication jobs. As with structural and judicious use of process and technology, it is possible to
comparisons, the ability to limit the scope of an operation craft a robust and systematic solution for managing database
to particular set of tables, as well as a particular set of change across one’s enterprise, yielding significant benefits
columns within the tables, is important to productivity in a very short time. ■
and performance. www.embarcadero.com

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2007 31

Ringing the Changes for Change Management

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