As part of the Jolt submission process, Nick put together a movie introducing dbdeploy – it’s not a bad place to start if you’re new to the product. Oh, and you really need sound to get the most out of it

There may of been some mis-communication on my part in previous posts refering to dbdeploy. To clarify, there is currently no support for MySql, however adding support for another database is trivial. It is on our todo list, but if you want to lend a hand, sign up to the mailing lists and drop us a line.

ThoughtWorks announces the release of dbdeploy – an open source database change management tool.

27th November 2006

XP Day 2006, Ironmongers’ Hall London 27th November 2006: Global IT Consultancy, ThoughtWorks today announces the release of dbdeploy . An open source tool for developers and database administrators (DBAs), dbdeploy is a simple solution to the problem of managing and deploying database refactorings to development, quality assurance (QA), user acceptance testing (UAT) and production environments.

dbdeploy has been created by a team of ThoughtWorks professionals based on their findings during recent client engagements. The tool evolved from a number of projects where its use, in conjunction with best practices such as continuous integration and automated builds, proved effective. dbdeploy has already been successfully implemented in internet service providers (ISPs) , the publishing and leasing sectors and a global sales and marketing organisation.

Nick Ashley, Consultant at ThoughtWorks explains the benefits of dbdeploy: “Getting database refactorings out of the development environment and pushed through to production can be a complex manual process that is prone to error. dbdeploy simplifies this process by automatically running database refactorings with each build. Using dbdeploy as part of an automated build empowers developers to write and test their own database refactorings, at the same time freeing up the DBA to work on more challenging issues. Another significant benefit of using dbdeploy is that database refactorings need only be written once – the tool then takes the strain and knows whether specific refactorings need to be applied to specific databases.”

Ashley continues: “When dbdeploy was used at a leading UK ISP it saved in the region of 3 days of effort per release. Prior to its introduction, a developer would need to gather together, test and fix the database refactorings to be shipped with the release. The need for this task was eliminated with the introduction of dbdeploy. Now that dbdeploy has been open sourced these benefits can be realised by other organisations at no cost.”

dbdeploy is written in Java and integrates with the Apache Ant build tool supporting Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase and Hypersonic SQL databases. A .Net port of the tool is in progress, which will be geared towards inclusion in .Net projects for use within Nant and MSBuild. The ThoughtWorks dbdeploy team included Graham Tackley, Nick Ashley and Sam Newman.

For more information and to download dbdeploy visit http://dbdeploy.com/
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About ThoughtWorks

ThoughtWorks is a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end global software development and delivery. The company’s pioneering approach, which includes industry acclaimed agile best practices, helps CIOs maximize investment performance across their portfolio of complex, business critical applications, while reducing time and risk. ThoughtWorks’ 700 professionals serve clients from offices in six countries including Australia, Canada, China, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. For further information please visit thoughtworks.com

Sam Newman and Graham Tackley will be presenting at “XP Day 2006” in London on Monday 27th of Monday, detailing a process for enabling change of your database using dbdeploy. This presentation will co-incide with the ‘official’ launch for dbdeploy. Presentation materials will be available on this site after the event.

Please let us know if this doesn’t suit your needs

But things are a little bit rough and ready. Priorities include more documentation and getting some distributions abailable for download. Comments are welcome