Three Rules for Database Work

Some developers love working with relational databases, and other developers can't stand to touch them. Either way - if your application uses a database, you have to treat the database with some respect. The database is as much a part of an application as the code and the models inside the software.

Here are three rules I've learned to live by over the years of working with relational databases.

1. Never use a shared database server for development work.

The convenience of a shared database is tempting. All developers point their workstations to a single database server where they can test and make schema changes. The shared server functions as an authoritative source for the database schema, and schema changes appear immediately to all team members. The shared database also serves as a central repository for test data.

Like many conveniences in software development, a shared database is a tar pit waiting to fossilize a project. Developers overwrite each other's changes. The changes I make on the server break the code on your development machine. Remote development is slow and difficult.

Avoid using a shared database at all costs, as they ultimately waste time and help produce bugs.

2. Always Have a Single, Authoritative Source For Your Schema

Ideally, this single source will be your source control repository (see rule #3). Consider the following conversation:

Developer 1: It's time to push the app into testing. Do we copy the database from Jack's machine, or Jill's machine?

Developer 2: Ummmmmmmm, I don't remember which one is up to date.

Developer 1: We're screwed.

Everyone should know where the official schema resides, and have a frictionless experience in getting a fresh database setup. I should be able to walk up to a computer, get the latest from source control, build, and run a simple tool to setup the database (in many scenarios, the build process can even setup a database if none exists, so the process is one step shorter).

How you put your database into source control depends on your situation and preferences. Any decent O/R mapping tool should be able to create a database given the mappings you've defined in a project. You can also script out the database as a set of one or more files full of SQL DDL commands. I generally prefer to keep database views and programmatic features (including functions, triggers, and stored procedures) as separate files - but more on this in a later post.

There are plenty of tools to help. Leon Bambrick has a long list (albeit one year old list) of tools and articles that can help, while Jeff Atwood gushes over the virtues of Visual Studio for Database Professionals.

3. Always Version Your Database

There are many ways to version databases, but the common goal is to propagate changes from development, to test, and ultimately to production in a controlled and consistent manner. A second goal is to have the ability to recreate a database at any point in time. This second goal is particularly important if you are shipping software to clients. If someone finds a bug in build 20070612.1 of your application, you must be able to recreate the application as it appeared in that build - database and all.

In a future post, I'll describe an approach I've used for database versioning that has worked well for many years of commercial development.

In the meantime, if you are looking for more database rule, then Adam Cogan and SSW maintain an excellent list.