Schema upgrades

From: Bhavesh A. Doshi <doshi_at_ecn.purdue.edu>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 11:26:51 -0500
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.05.9906101109320.24176-100000@shay.ecn.purdue.edu>

Hi,

I am working on a problem on schema upgrade and needed some information on it.

In a database system which has many database accounts with the same schema, in time, one would need to change the schem which could mean that new columns are added or deleted or moved to different tables, computations may need to take place to populate newly introduced tables or columns, and table merges to support normalization or table divisions, index additions, etc.

How does one go about upgrading the schema in an efficient manner and also have the current schema laid out in one place for a developer's reference and future upgrades ?

One approach is to maintain two master copies: One being the complete, homogenized schema and the other a serial collection of upgrade procedures. But these two masters often become out of synchronization and this causes many more problems.

Has anyone worked on some similar project or has pointers to this problems ?

Thanks,
Bhavesh Received on Thu Jun 10 1999 - 11:26:51 CDT