It sure seems like there’s a lot of miscommunication between developers and database specialists. In fact, the communication can become so poor that outright hostility between the groups is common. At the end of the day we are all working towards a common goal, to add value to whatever organization we are working for. It’s a shame that we all lose sight of this commonality and create such a false dichotomy between the groups. I think there are some ways that we, as database specialists, can use to attempt to cross that gap.

Prior to being suborned to the dark side, I was a developer. I had a little over 10 years experience working in VB, Java & C#. I remember, distinctly, cursing our database team for being so problematic about how they did things. They slowed me down. They got in the way. When I had problems they were slow to respond, unless the problems were on production. I know I even instigated a few fights with them in an attempt to get them to move the way I wanted (hard to believe, I know). Then came the day when I shifted over to all database work.

Suddenly, I’m responsible for making sure the production system stays online and that the data is readily available to the business. Now I’m slowing down development, because I want a chance to review their design and validate their code to ensure it’ll work well and not affect production. Now I’m acting as a gatekeeper to prevent unauthorized access to the systems or at least keep people from making any of the 10,001 simple errors that could impact production. Now when a developer wants something fixed in dev, I’m the guy telling them they have to wait because something in production is wonky. And yeah, I’ve instigated fights from this side as I tried to get devs to understand that simply delivering code is not enough and that data persistence is there for a reason (again, shocking I’m sure).

Remember, both of these groups are more right than wrong, and both are working towards that common goal, value for the business. But they really don’t get along. What’s more, what they work on and how they work with it is frequently at odds. Ever heard of the object-relational impedance mismatch? How about the concept that you don’t have a database, but a persistence layer? What about managing data integrity within the application (one of my abiding favorites)? Never heard of those terms or concepts? Then you’re probably a database specialist and you’re probably not talking to your developers. If they haven’t already, they’ll soon be introducing an Object Relational Mapping tool to your enterprise. Best of luck.

A lot of these communication issues probably can’t be solved, but I know of one place where most database specialists are not communicating well with their dev teams, and database guys, it’s your fault. Source Control. Do you think of the structures and procedures within your database as code? You should, because, to a large degree, it is. The Data Definition Language (DDL) calls that make up your tables, views and procedures are code. That code needs to be checked into a source control management system. There, the individual objects can be versioned and managed. There you can create labeled releases of your code. There you can branch your code to create alternate development or support streams that contain variations of your database. There you can merge changes from multiple users and branches into a single main source for deployment to production. There you can keep your database directly in sync with application developers code.

Did you catch that last one? You can become more tightly coupled with your development team. Best of all, you can do this using their tools and their language. This is the communication problem I want you, the database professional to solve. Very few of us database types are using source control these days. This, despite the fact that there are fantastic tools and methods under development from different vendors that directly address the issue of getting and keeping database code within a source control system.

Years ago, when I first made the jump to databases, I was appalled that I couldn’t keep my code in source control. Then, as I worked more and more with databases, despite the problems, I abandoned the idea of managing the code in source because, frankly, it was way too hard. But several years ago new tools appeared on the market to make it possible (if still somewhat painful) to get the database into source control. I’ve been working that way for years now. It has completely eliminated one of the many problems I used to have with developers. They now know that my code is stored with theirs. That my versions are their versions. That their labels are my labels. That we branch the code together. It’s taken completely for granted, and we share a common language about change and deployment.

This has not solved every problem or conflict with database teams I’ve worked with. It has eliminated a source of friction. It has increased communication. It’s something that I could do, and you can do, to get a little closer to your development team. Not to mention the fact that you will now have your databases in a known state, all the time, that you’ll be deploying from a single location, that you can manage access to your code, and all the other things that having your databases in source control will bring.

For more details on the concept of putting your database in source control, and working better within teams in general, I’d recommend reading the SQL Server Team-based Development book. It’s a free download.

Addendum (3/27/2011): If you got this link through an email, could you post a comment below as to which distribution list it’s from? Thanks.

You just have to love Red Gate tools. They find the small area that they want to cover and then they cover it extremely well. I rave regularly about SQL Prompt and SQL Compare and SQL Search (free one, btw). I’ve got SQL Data Compare and SQL Data Generator open & working on my desk regularly. I’m dabbling in their other tools fairly often as well. I just like Red Gate tools. I guess my constant & consistent praise is why I’m a “Friend of Red Gate.” I like to mention that before I start praising their tools some more, just so no one thinks I’m hiding it. Why would I hide it? I’m proud to say it. I am a Friend of Red Gate! … anyway… where was I… right, new software. I took a small part (a very small part) in the beta for their new software, SQL Source Control. I thought it was pretty cool when it wasn’t quite working right. Well, now it’s out, working very well, and it’s pretty slick.

Basically Red Gate has created a nice tight coupling between Source Control & your database. They currently support Apache Subversion and Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS). It let’s you create a mechanism for keeping track of your databases in the same way that you track your code. I honestly believe this is a must for any reasonably sized development team (read, more than two). I can expound on why, but instead I’ll just talk some more about SQL Source Control.

First thing you need to know is that it’s hooked into Management Studio. After you do the install, you get some extra windows in SSMS that look something like this:

I’ve scratched out my own server & database names, but you get the idea. The description summarizes it very well. Lots of people can work on the database, save the scripts into source control, and then they can pull that common set of scripts back out to do more work, just like working with code. It really is the best way to develop.

You just have to connect up the database following the directions and you’ll see something like this:

If you can see that, that’s a database (name hidden) that’s been hooked up to source control. Actually, that and the change to the set-up screen are about your only indications that this tool is running. I love the lack of intrusion.

Better still, each time you reconnect the database, as it goes and checks to see if there are updates in source control, you get a little spinning… looks like a yin/yang symbol.

Enough about pretty graphics. How does it work? Extremely well. I started adding new database objects, editing existing objects, and all it ever did was put one of it’s little symbols on the object that I had created or edited, marking it as a change. When I was ready to move the changes to source control, I just clicked on the Commit Changes tab. All the changes are listed and you see scripts showing before & after between the code in the database and the code in source control.

It just works. Same thing going the other way. A database already connected can just pull changes out and apply them. Nothing I did in all my testing hit a snag (granted, I was just working on pretty traditional tables, procedures, indexes, etc.).

The one thing I’ve found that I don’t like is that there doesn’t seem to be a facility for deploying the databases automatically. Instead, I had to create a blank database, hook that to the existing database in TFS and then pull down all the “missing” objects. Hopefully they’ll go to work on a way to automate that soon.

Just to reiterate, the point of the exercise is to get your code (and while you’re developing, a database is as much code as anything written in C#) into source control. Once you’re in source control, you manage your databases just like code, label, version, branch, whatever you need to do to maintain a tight coupling with the rest of the code for the app. SQL Source Control acts as a very fast and simple tool to enable that coupling for you.