[fendale]

This is an area I have experimented with in large enterprise environments, usually with Oracle databases.

In one job I created a process where we used Rails style migrations with some Ruby code I put together. As well as schema migrations, I had it handle applying stored procedures to the database too.

Since then I created a little application called dbgeni (database generic installer) and have been using it successfully to create Dev and Test environments in another job. It changes the schema with migrations and applies changed stored procedures too.

One difference with dbgeni and other tools, is that dbgeni uses plain SQL files and applies them using the database CLI - ie sqlplus for Oracle, the mysql command for MySql and isql for Sybase. This means that if you take the tool away, the SQL scripts are still useful - that allows me to use the tool for applying changes to dev and test environments, but since the production DBAs don't want to use it, I can just bundle up the same scripts and pass them over.

The project is on github https://github.com/sodonnel/dbgeni and it installs as a Ruby gem. I have supporting website http://dbgeni.appsintheopen.com with more details.