Continuous Database Integration - Continuous Integration - page 126

Deployment
As we have indicated, the goal of CDBI is to treat your database
source code and other source code in the same manner. The Continu-
ous Deployment process will deploy your database to your develop-
ment and test database instances just as it deploys your other code to
its different environments (e.g., application servers). If you need to
migrate from one database to another, you will be able to better test the
migration process by running through the process on a continuous or
scheduled basis.
Feedback and Documentation
When you incorporate continuous feedback and CDBI into your CI
system, you will find out if your build failed because of the latest data-
base changes. By default, most CI systems send the build status to the
people who last applied changes to the version control repository. Just
like with the source code, the CI system notifies those who made data-
base changes quickly so that they can make the necessary fixes to the
database.
Documentation is about communication, and there is much about
the database you'll want to communicate to other project members or
your customer. Your Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) and data dic-
tionary are excellent candidates for generating as a part of your contin-
uous build process, perhaps as a secondary build (described in Chapter 4).
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Summary
This chapter demonstrated that database assets are the same as
other source code. Therefore, the same principles apply.
■ Automate your database integration using orchestrated build
scripts that are run continuously, after any change to your database
or its source code.
■ Ensure a single source for database assets by placing them in a
version control repository.