Introducing Version Control to Database-Centric Applications in a Small Enterprise

Employing version control and separating test and production systems from each other are well-known software engineering practices. However, small software development organizations sometimes neglect the corresponding tools and processes, partly because they lack experience, and partly because of genuine technical challenges. For example, decoupling the production and test environments using version control software is no trivial exercise in an environment of conflicting requirements, tight budget constraints and a high-volume, business-critical online database that must be kept synchronized with the source code. The authors' method of database schema version control converts schema elements into textual configuration items that an organization can manage using freely available open source tools